Posted on 03/11/2011 4:41:11 PM PST by Scythian
I have potassium iodide tablets, I thought they were expired but they're good through 4/11 so I'm good. Drudge has a nuclear plants ready to blow in Japan and another ready to blow (who knows?). I have three kids. How are we going to know to use these tablets if we have to? I hope the stupid people in charge don't keep us in the dark until it's too late.
What are we to do?
A thousand times ‘next-to-nothing’ is still next to nothing.
Are you concerned if something doubles your chances of a bad consequence if your original odds were 1 million to 1?
I have my own but don’t worry, you won’t need it. If by any remote chance something happens, I’ll keep posting reading from Minnesota.
Also, sadly, I have not grown three extra brains which could substantially boost my income earning levels, particularly at blackjack card-counting and craps table odds percentage calculations.
I'll let you know if any of this happens. In the meantime, you can put your potassium iodide pills back inside the medicine cabinet.
Iodine 131 is used as medical treatment for thyriod disorders. Massive amounts are required to kill the thyroid gland. If you aren’t in any danger of anything direct from a meltdown, the tiny amount of I-131 you may absorb will be negligible in terms of health.
If you are in danger from the direct effects of these plants you should be getting the hell out of Dodge instead of looking for those pills.
We dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. Did anyone in the US need any pills back then?
We’ve detonated God only knows how many FAR larger bombs between here and there since. I wouldn’t worry about it....
Wrap your body in 4” of aluminum foil. You’ll be fine.
I drive ‘87 and an ‘08 Gold Wings. I’m not worried.
Don’t throw the tablet away.
I was just about to ask where she/he was, as well. If she is in America, I would prescribe strong sedatives, and leave the kids with relatives.
The key (I think - I’m no expert) is knowing the distance from a strike or a meltdown to know what your risks are. I know for example, that I will need to take Potassium Iodide if there is a nuclear event in a city 30 minutes from me, but not necessarily if there is a nuclear event at a city 4 hours away.
A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 (2000 blasts and we’re not dead yet?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY
You guys crack me up, okay, guess there’s nothing to worry about until “Japan Syndrome” occurs, then we’ll see.
Perhaps you have grown three extra brains! After all you are posting that on FR and not on DU or Kos.
By the way, before you go shoving pills down your kid’s throats, have you had them tested for iodine allergies?
How does potassium iodide “expire?”
It sure as the dickens doesn’t biodegrade...
I understand your concern. But ....
There is a POTENTIAL for release of SOME radioactive gasses from the Japanese power plants. Right now, there has been NO release of radioactive gasses from those plants. No radioactive gasses (in Japan) means no gasses flowing out across the western Pacific, across the mid-pacific (HI) and then the eastern Pacific (CA, OR, Washington state). Then they’d have to flow across the rest of the states to where you are. All the while they are decaying and they are being diluted with tens of trillions of tons of inert material - other gasses and materials. Much ionized material - and radiation naturally ionizes the little bitty flecks of dirt (solids) these condensed gasses and radioactive material into the ocean. Where it goes away.
The radioactive “chains” of decay products are tricky: What starts as a gas can turn into a solid, which might decay into another gas, which decays into a gas, which decays into a solid, etc. Etc. sometimes....
In any case, the radioactive material is INSIDE the containment domes - that’s why they are there! - and the levels - while high inside the dome - are NOT a danger outside the dome.
The potassium iodide tablets are used to vastly “OVERLOAD” your (kids’) thyroids with massive overdoses of iodide internally so the (very few) external radioactive iodide flowing through the air from Japan in this case - are not absorbed in your kid’s thyroid.
So, do you want to overdose their thyroids for no reason? Just keep the pills. Out of their body until radiation levels exceed limits here.
I believe there have been something like 1200 above ground nuclear bomb tests.
What???
Oh, ... you said “tentacles”.
Nevermind.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.