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`Sinkhole' Nuke Pill Business Becomes Bonanza in Age of Terror By KEVIN COUGHLIN And SUSAN K. LIVIO c.2002 Newhouse News Service |
Soon after Three Mile Island in 1979, Bruce Rodin and Alan Morris hit on a surefire plan to get rich. They would sell KI pills -- tablets containing potassium iodide that could ward off thyroid cancer in nuclear accidents.
It has taken two decades, thousands of dollars and fears spawned by Sept. 11, but it looks as if their ship finally has come in.
Fourteen states so far have accepted KI pill supplies from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which tapped Rodin and Morris' Anbex Inc. of Palm Harbor, Fla., for 9 million tablets marketed under the brand name Iosat.
Only one other over-the-counter potassium iodide product -- Thyro-Block, from Medpointe Inc. of Somerset, N.J. -- also has approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
"This has taken over our lives," said Rodin, a Branchville, N.J., resident who sells lighting systems. Partner Morris sells swimming pools in Florida.
Before last year's terror attacks, Rodin said, their pill venture was an economic "sinkhole" ridiculed by friends and family, and patronized mainly by Y2K survivalists.
Now Iosat is hot. An Anbex contractor in Westchester County, N.Y., recently churned out more than 15 million tablets, Rodin said. The NRC has earmarked $1.2 million for pills from Anbex.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bought 50,000 packages during the Winter Olympics -- "just in case" -- and tablets were sold to Louisville authorities for the Kentucky Derby, Rodin said.
Other customers include pharmacies near New York state's Indian Point nuclear plant, and the CVS chain's Web site. Anbex also sells 14-day supplies online, for about $10.
President Bush signed a bioterrorism bill last week mandating that potassium iodide -- which also is used in iodizing salt -- be available to everyone near America's 103 nuclear power plants.
Such pills were credited with saving Polish citizens from thyroid cancer after the Soviet nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986.
Fears of nuclear terrorism have sparked national interest in potassium iodide and inflamed rivalries within the industry.
Rodin claimed Anbex pills, individually wrapped to resist moisture, last longer than bottled pills.
Bill Whitacre, whose 200-pill bottles of "Rad Block KI" are sold online for $20 by the American Civil Defense Association, accused Anbex and Medpointe of a "campaign to discredit our product," which still is seeking FDA approval.
Medpointe, a past supplier for the Department of Defense, did not return calls seeking comment.
Potassium iodide is most effective when taken about three hours before exposure to a plume of radioactivity. Infants, children and pregnant or nursing women are at greatest risk of thyroid cancer from such a plume.
Though the pills block absorption of inhaled or ingested radioactive iodine, they won't block other radioactive substances that could be vented if terrorists blew up a nuclear power plant or detonated a "dirty" bomb.
Rodin and Morris won FDA approval in 1983 and have been defending their enterprise to naysayers ever since.
"Lucrative? Nobody in their right mind would have done what we did and stuck with this for 20 years," said Rodin, 57. He estimates they sold 200,000 pill packages before Sept. 11.
The idea was hatched by Morris, now 60 and living in Palm Harbor. At the time, he worked for Publishers Clearinghouse. "I saw lots of magazines," he said. One tipped him to potassium iodide; when he was unable to buy any to protect his 2-year-old, Anbex was born.
The two friends spent "tens of thousands" on their anti-nuke pills, Rodin said, but couldn't find takers even near Three Mile Island, where some radioactivity had been released after a partial meltdown in March 1979. He said newspapers in the area near Harrisburg, Pa., called them opportunists and refused their ads at first.
"It's like people on the San Andreas Fault don't want to be reminded there are earthquakes there," said Rodin.
Both partners view nuclear power as a safe industry with catastrophic potential. They kept the faith -- however apocalyptic.
One day they're going to need this stuff, Rodin remembers thinking. "It proved to be the right decision."
(Kevin Coughlin covers technology for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. He can be contacted at kcoughlin@starledger.com. Susan Livio is a reporter in the Trenton bureau of The Star-Ledger. She can be contacted at slivio@starledger.com.) |
