[URBAN NOTE] On the potassium iodide rush in Toronto

[rfmcdonald]

It was only after I read the Canadian Press news story from British Columbia, one describing how fears over fallout from the ongoing Fukushima catastrophe is encouraging a run on potassium iodide in Vancouver-area pharmacies, that I realized why the woman ahead of me in line at my habitual Yonge and Bloor pharmacy requested that strange compound. (They had none.) And indeed, it's only today that I realized that are at least moderately plausible local reasons to stock up on potassium iodide, since Toronto's suburban city of Pickering itself houses a nuclear reactor complex. Terry Davidson's Toronto Sun article goes into a bit of detail.

In the ten years Janice Marks has been working at Bay Bridges Pharmacy, she has never seen such a demand for iodine pills.

The drug store is just 3 km from the Pickering nuclear plant and has been one of several dispensing free potassium iodide pills over the years to people who live around the plant.

The pills are used to protect people from radioactive iodine, and are commonly used when a radioactive accident has happened.

“Today alone we’ve already had four people,” Marks said Tuesday. “That doesn’t seem like a lot but for here it is. Normally, I might get four people in a year.”

Marks chalks up the sudden demand for the pills to the news of the nuclear crisis in Japan following the massive earthquake that devastated parts of the country Friday and the fact that many of her customers live close to the Pickering plant.

Bay Bridges is one of five drug stores listed by Emergency Management Ontario dispensing the pills for free to people living within 10 km of the Pickering plant. The same program is in effect for people living close to the Darlington nuclear plant, as well.

“A few people have come in and expressed that they’re afraid...that the same thing could happen here with an earthquake,” Marks said. “And they’re afraid nuclear power stations are not prepared to handle these kinds of emergencies.”

The Toronto Star's Carola Vyhnak and Debra Black goes into more detail about the pills' mechanisms and their actual need.

The so-called KI pills have long been available for free at several pharmacies to people who live or work within 10 kilometres of the Pickering and Darlington nuclear plants.

They work preventatively by filling the thyroid gland with nonradioactive iodine so there’s no room for radioactive iodine to accumulate. It’s then excreted in urine.

“The thyroid needs iodine to produce the thyroid hormone,” explained Alvin Powers, an endocrinologist and professor of molecular physiology and biophysics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

“If there is radioactive iodide in anything we eat or drink it gets concentrated in the thyroid, stays there and emits radiation in the thyroid,” Powers said.

Children are considered the most vulnerable. After the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, thyroid cancer rates in children in Belarus and Ukraine increased substantially.

Taken before exposure, potassium iodide can provide protection for 24 hours, and may also be beneficial taken within three or four hours after exposure. But it protects only against thyroid cancer, not other forms of radiation sickness.

Durham Region’s health department, which distributes the pills as a precautionary measure through five pharmacies as well as schools, daycare centres, emergency services and hospitals in the primary zone, reported increased calls to its helpline.

With an ongoing threat of radiation leaks in Japan, “I think it’s reasonable that people start thinking,” said Ken Gorman, director of the environmental health division.

But he was quick to quell concerns, saying no one is at risk from anything coming from that country and the likelihood of a similar situation happening here is “extremely low.”

He said there’s no risk outside the 10-kilometre radius. More information about the pills is available on the health department’s webpage at durham.ca.