First Mssg to Tom & Lifang regarding Iodine reactors

My friends Tom & Lifang started my interest in this topic by raising the issue Iodine.  Here's our initial exchanges:


Here's the dosage levels recommended by the World Health Organization for
Kids, Pregnant and lactating women and adults.  Basically everybody needs
about 1/10 of a microgram a day.

http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/WHOStatement__IDD_pregnancy.pdf

Presumably if you get a bit more than that your thyroid will be hapilly
saturated w/ I2 and won't need any extra from Fukushima.




Thanks, and cograts to Tom for being so active and informed on this issue.

I too have been parsing the micgrograms (ug) vs miligrams (mg) text...and
in fact I just this morning edited Wikipedia's article on Iodine to
highlight the problem you mentioned.

Here's what I think based on that article.  Let me know if this makes
sense or not.  KI tablets apperently come in "130 mg" doses.  I think this
means that the total mass of the tablet is 130 mg.  But some of that
tablet may be filler. The active ingredient may be smaller.

By the way I think the authorities are acting responsibly in discouraging
any sort of Iodine related panic in the US.  Epidemiologically there's
more likelihood of some parent panicking and giving their kid an
dangerous overdose  (eg 2-3 GRAMS) than thier is of radiation poisoning
RIGHT NOW.

However the situation at Fukushima continues to deteriorate with even the
US NRC calling radiation levels "extremely high" and new revelations
getting worse including:

- previously harmless reactor #4 is now listed (by US NRC) as the biggest
threat even though it wasn't in use at the time.  That's  because it has a huge amount
of now exposed spent fuel which is burning

- Reactor 3 and possibly others also stored spent  in their roofs, so when
they exploded that stuff probably went all over the place.

- The 50 people working a the plant were removed...but may now be back.
If radiation levels get to high the plant will have to be abandoned to
melt down.   The only alternative is what they did in Chernobyl:
"biorobots"  Humans assigned to do something that only a robot should do.

We may be looking a months of radiation leaks....so there might be a
cumulatively significant signal even this far away.

Another thought:  our kids are probably getting a decent dose of iodine
from their food.  This can be boosted by adding a little kelp and some
kinds of seafood.  Anyone up for  sushi?

-Chris