Cecil’s column on potassium iodide pills got me thinking. Let’s say, just for fun, that some very enthusiastic Muslims were to crash an airplane into the Indian Point nuclear power plant’s used rod pool. Let us further presume that traffic out of Manhattan for some reason really blows that day and besides I’m too busy downloading pornography to want to go anyplace anyhow. Let us also speculate that my fairy godfather (the one who knows how to dress) had the foresight to prepare me a kit for just such an occasion. Let us finally assume that said FGF actually knew what he was doing. What would it consist of? How much would it cost? Not that I’m paranoid. No sir. Not me. I’m just spit-balling past the graveyard.
A little more detail is in order. Iodine in large doses is poisonous. Small amounts of iodine are essential, however, and are safely collected in the thyroid gland. Radioactive iodine is not “poisonous” in a way that ordinary iodine is not. Rather, if it is collected in the thyroid, the gland and the area immediately around it are is exposed to radiation, increasing the risk of cancer.
Potassium iodide, since it contains iodine, is also taken up by the thyroid. Taking a large amount of PI floods the thyroid with all the iodine it can hold, and thus any radioactive iodine is excreted.
PI is cheap and easy to take as a pill. However, it deteriorates when exposed to heat or light. The thyroid remains flooded only for a short time, so you can’t take PI once and stop worrying.
Iodine is a very small component of nuclear fuel rods. Even assuming that all the radioactive material escaped from a nuclear plant, and all the iodine was vaporized, the likelihood of exposure is small, except in the area immediately around the plant. I think PI tablets have been distributed in the 10-mile evacuation areas around nuclear plants. Anything more is just a cynical attempt to cash in on fear-mongering.
PI of course does nothing to protect from other types of radiation. And if there’s a nuclear bomb attack, getting thyroid cancer years later is the least of your worries.
As I recall, most of the fission products are very dangerous when exposure to them is prolonged. Noble gasses are relatively non-dangerous since they will disappate in the atmosphere and any that you’ve breathed will fairly quickly be exhaled. I.e. short biological half-life. Cesium likewise has a fairly short bio half-life. So long as the ambient concentration of these elements is low, they don’t pose a large risk. Iodine has a long bio half-life, as does Strontium. Even low concentrations of these are dangerous because they stay in the body so long. So it makes sense to take added steps to protect against them.
IIRC, the reason plutonium (not a fission product, but rather a by-product) is so dangerous is that it is chemically similar to calcium (or maybe it binds to calcium, or maybe it has just always really admired calcium). At any rate, I think it gets into your bones and sets up long-term housekeeping.
I wonder if taking large doses of calcium would prevent inhaled/ingested pu from staying in the body long-term.
Here’s a bit of related info about strontium-90: http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q2321.html
Unfortunately, it side-steps the question. I sill don’t know if taking calcium would provide protection in the event of accidental ingestion.
Strontium would be a lot more similar to calcium than plutonium (and I guess Sr goes to bones and teeth also). All I could find about plutonium is that it forms insoluble phosphates, which calcium also does. Whatever proteins are responsible for synthesizing, transporting and binding these insoluble phosphates into bones must not be very good at recognizing the difference between Ca and Pu phosphates… which is strange, because Pu is much larger than Ca. Organisms can tell the difference between Ca and Mg, or Ca and K – they should be able to recognize something as huge and, uh, radioactive as plutonium phosphate, but I guess evolution never made that a requirement.
Taking large doses of Ca probably wouldn’t help against Pu exposure, because excess Ca can be easily eliminated, and because most Pu you’re exposed to probably ends up bound to bone before it’s eliminated. I don’t know of any other biological method of dealing with Pu, and since it’s not something organisms would expect to encounter, I’m guessing there’s no method of eliminating it or similar radioactive actinides.
Like I said in that other post, most of the fission products you’d expect to find in fallout (except for iodine) aren’t found in normal human metabolism, so they wouldn’t be incorporated into your body by a normal mechanism, and hence can’t be protected against by providing a surplus of a non-radioactive isotope.
I seem to recall that plutonium is highly toxic even if its radioactivity is ignored.
On a different note, the Irish Government issued everyoune in the state with potasium iodide pills about 18 months ago, after a public flap about the possibility of terrorists flying into the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria, UK, which is about 60 miles off the Irish coast and generally believed to be the most lethal plant in the world (at least by the Irish and many who live near it!)
It might have that reputation, but plutonium metal isn’t really all that toxic. I couldn’t easily find an MSDS for it, but I found one for uranium – there’s no LD50, but the PEL (the maximum safe concentration for an 8-hour work day) is 0.05 mg/m3. This is the effects of exposure (sorry about the caps, but it’s meant to be attention-getting):
INHALATION: DUST INHALATION CAN RESULT IN RADIATION DOSE
TO LUNG. KIDNEY DAMAGE CAN OCCUR DUE TO CHEMICAL TOXICITY. SKIN: LOW LEVEL
RADIATION DOSE CAN RESULT FROM CONTINUED EXPOSURE. EYE: IRRITANT. INGEST:
INGEST CAN RESULT IN RADIATION DOSE. KIDNEY DAMAGE CAN OCCUR DUE TO CHEMICAL
TOXICITY.
Uranium and plutonium metal are both pyrophoric; they ignite spontaneously above a certain temperature (150-175°C), as if toxicity and radioactivity weren’t enough.
Anyway, there are organic compounds that are far more toxic, gram for gram, than plutonium. Nerve gases like Sarin and VX come to mind. If I remember correctly, the most potent non-peptide poison is brevetoxin B, the compound secreted by the bacteria responsible for red tide. It’s also one of the most complex organic molecules ever synthesized. (http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/quicktime/brevetoxin.html)
The most toxic substance on earth is botulinum toxin, which thousands of people now willingly pay large sums of money to be injected with in order to gain the appearance of youth by temporarily paralyzing the muscles that cause wrinkles.
So, I was sitting around the office in the Flatiron district of New York with nothing to occupy my devil’s workshop (aside from the contemptible poison of actual labor) and thinking about ways to protect myself in the face of the unthinkable when the lights went out and two words popped into my head: INDIAN POINT! Did my starting this thread somehow set off a chain of comically coincidental, yet poignant, events culminating in my own destruction and that of several million others? Did some lucky devotees finally score their 72 virgins per as Allah had always intended them to since the beginning of time? That was my conviction. But I was calm and knowing as I looked down on the street and envied those who were too small-minded to realize that their time on earth was almost up.
Anyway, my compliments to the power company in Ohio.
Did you know that it’s really difficult to find a radiation suit on the internet? I know this because I was shopping and am now seriously considering purchasing one as part of my kit. How does one go about getting one? Also, I’m looking into lead-lined containers to safe-keep my six-packs of Ensure while the panic’s on.
By the way, those are some very informative responses.