NADP News September 09, 2010

Nuke pill supplies are on the way By ROGER TALBOT Sunday News Staff Since they started marketing Iosat almost 20 years ago, Bruce W. Rodin and his partner, Alan Morris, have hoped their customers will never have to peel their product’s shiny foil wrap and swallow the tiny pill inside. They were motivated by what happened at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pa., in 1979, when loss of coolant led to a partial meltdown of the reactor core, and by the explosion and fires at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine in 1986 that released radioactive waste the winds carried across much of Europe. While making their living in other business pursuits, the two men kept alive their Florida-based Anbex Corp., which has only one product: Iosat, a 130-milligram potassium iodide tablet. A few other companies make potassium iodide tablets and sell them in bottles, but Anbex wrapped each of its pills in foil to extend the shelf life. Rodin noted he has tested Iosat made 15 years ago and found the pills retain their potency. “Alan has always thought that the chance of a nuclear plant accident is not miniscule so we’ve kept going. We’ve been serious about the idea of making this stuff available to those who want it,” Rodin said in a telephone interview from his home in New Jersey. The problem has been in getting those in authority to take them seriously. “We’re not talking about a huge amount of money here,” Rodin said of the pill. He ships a two-week supply mail-order for $14. “The government could buy it in bulk for less money than they spend on hammers,” he said. At one point, he proposed Iosat be stockpiled in every post office for quick distribution during an emergency. “There is a post office near everybody,” Rodin said. Another suggestion would have had the utilities jointly buy into a large quantity of Iosat and stockpile the pills at a central distribution hub, like Memphis, Tenn., the home base for Federal Express. If an emergency developed at one of the nation’s 103 nuclear power plants, a plane load of the tablets could be quickly shipped to that location. “We still got resistance from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” Rodin said of official aversion to acknowledging the possibility of a catastrophic nuclear power plant accident. “They said people don’t need this and, even if we put it on planes, how would we get it from the airport to the people who need it?” Potassium iodide, better known by its chemical symbol, KI, protects the thyroid from the radioactive iodine that could be released in a nuclear reactor disaster. The drug, when taken shortly before or in the hours immediately after exposure, saturates the thyroid with iodine, preventing cancer-causing radioactive iodine from settling in the sensitive gland. KI protects against radioactive iodine — not the myriad of other poisonous and radioactive substances that could spew from a damaged nuclear reactor. Authorities have emphasized evacuation offers the only real protection. While the contamination from other deadly substances would be concentrated in communities adjacent to a damaged nuclear reactor, the winds could carry radioactive iodine for days before it settles out and affects people living hundreds of miles from the disaster site. Over the years, Anbex has sold its foil-wrapped KI pills to government agencies and some of the utilities that operate nuclear power plants in about a dozen states, including Vermont, Pennsylvania, New York and the Tennessee Valley Authority. The agencies and utilities buy KI for emergency and plant employees who would be required to work in the danger zone after an accident. They usually stockpile modest amounts, about 1,000, 14-pill packets, Rodin said. KI is a non-prescription drug and Anbex sells its pill to anyone who orders by telephone — (727) 329-1115, Ext. 1572 — on the company’s Internet Web site (www.anbex.com) and through survivalist-oriented Internet distributors. Last year, the town of Duxbury, Mass., appropriated $5,000 to buy enough Iosat to distribute to 22,000 people, if an accident happened at the nearby Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station. The biggest spike in mail-order sales came in late 1999 when fear spread over the possibility the millennium New Year would trigger widespread disruptive computer failures. Last May, Rodin was handing out samples of Iosat at a nuclear industry trade show in Tennessee when he bumped into folks from New Hampshire who work for the state Office of Emergency Management. The New Hampshire officials told him of their efforts to get pharmacies to stock and promote KI to their customers. “I told them that was a wonderful idea. I asked them to send me a list of all the pharmacies in the state so we can send them free samples and they can decide if they want to buy our product,” Rodin said. The New Hampshire Sunday News reported last week that pharmacists have not followed through on the state’s request because they have been unable to find a ready source of KI and cannot buy the drug through their wholesale distributors. Rodin said he did not receive the list of New Hampshire pharmacies from the state until last week. “We’re in the process of sending out samples to all these pharmacies,” starting with the stores in communities near the Seabrook Station and Vermont Yankee nuclear power plants, he said. Rodin said he was contacted last week by representatives of the CVS drug store chain reacting to interest shown by their pharmacists in New Hampshire. And a pharmacist at the Shop ‘N Save in Hampton has ordered Iosat. “He ordered 100 packs and sold out. Within 10 days, he had ordered another 200 and, before we filled that order, he faxed me an order for 500 more,” Rodin said. He is also trying to develop an information kit to distribute to pharmacies who may be hesitant to stock KI. They would hand out the kit to customers interested in buying directly from Anbex. If this approach catches on, Rodin said he would find a way to compensate the pharmacies that help connect his company with new customers. “It’s a different world now,” Rodin said. “Who could have contemplated using a commercial airline as a bomb,” he said, alluding to the attacks of Sept. 11 that have raised concerns about the possibility of sabotage at nuclear power plants. “We’ve kept this company alive because we thought that at some point it would be important to have KI available,” Rodin said. “This has been on our minds and in our hearts for years and I hope we can rise to the occasion and satisfy the needs of people who now want our product.”

Disclaimer