Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Do NOT Take Potassium Iodide ! Unless You're Stupid.

Fukushima, 3 minutes after the Disaster

Folks, I was going to let this roll around until my "Engineering" cycle, but I feel it's too important to NOT get the word out immediately.

Do NOT take Potassium Iodide pills. They're poison. OK, if you live within 10 miles of the Japanese Fukushima  plant and the skin on your bones and muscles is warping, DO take them. It's a pill of last resort, and in that sense, sure, take them if you must.

But for EVERYONE ELSE? Do NOT take these pills!

Wanna have em on hand, if say you live 10 miles within say one of Salem Co., NJ's 3 Nuclear Power reactors? Fine. Have em and hold on to em. But really, can we get any MORE paranoid? Because I honestly don't think we can.

GW Johnson, Professional Consulting Engineer, goes into the explicit details: here.

A  two-headed calf. Just one of the effects that may occur by ingesting the "emergency ONLY"  teratogen that is Potassium Iodide. Although I really don't think humans should worry about giving birth to calves, one-headed or otherwise.

"Potassium iodide is a mild irritant and should be handled with gloves. Chronic overexposure can have adverse effects on the thyroid. Potassium iodide is a possible teratogen."


2 comments:

Phil Warnell said...

This is a good thing to have given some light to and addresses in part my more general concern. That being the thing I find most disturbing in all this, as it being largely ignored, is the lack of reporting of what stands as being the true degree of relative (comparative) risk this represents for the world. That is many are unaware that the numerous above ground nuclear weapons tests conducted between 1945 and 1980 had each one place many times the radioactive elements into our environment and to have them spread more globally then even the worst case scenario at Fukushima has the potential of.

That is I find it grossly irresponsible for the press to continue to play on people’s fears, just in order to make a buck. Then again what should we expect to happen when people without a firm scientific grounding being largely the group that speaks to a society where science is widely thought not necessary to be understood, yet only to be believed or not as if it were a religion.

Steven Colyer said...

I hear you but complaining about it only makes us feel good. :-)

I shy away, no, STAY away from all Religion vs Science debates as it offends my faithless Agnostic character. That which cannot be proven nor dis-proven until 2 seconds after we're dead stopped interesting me quite a while ago. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. If the Atheists are right then well I always liked a good long nap so no worries I can't lose either way. ;-)

Science is obviously not a religion; those who believe so had bad teachers probably starting with their parents so debating them is meaningless and an exercise in frustration.

"Irresponsible journalism" is redundant in my view. I'm not sure what it's like in Canada but in the US every last dang media outlet is run by corporations, so don't expect the full story on just about anything. The stories we do get have hidden agendas that even a principled investigator has trouble finding out and others are padded in so many deep layers of bullshit it's downright impossible.