A BOSTON GLOBE EDITORIAL

IF THE SEPT. 11 terrorists had chosen to sabotage a nuclear power plant instead of attacking the World Trade Center and Pentagon, only four states would have met one of the minimal tests of preparedness: a stockpile of potassium iodide tablets to ward off the thyroid cancer that radioactivity often causes.

Massachusetts is not one of them. But there is movement now in the direction of securing pills for the public. The state Department of Public Health - which in the past has recommended that pills be available not for neighbors of nuclear plants but only for emergency workers and institutionalized people who can't be quickly evacuated - is soon expected to change that policy in response to Sept. 11.

At the same time, a bill is in the Legislature that would require stockpiling to protect everyone within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant, as well as residents of the Cape and islands. The measure was filed long before Sept. 11 and deserves prompt approval if the DPH does not take action on its own.

At the federal level, it was encouraging to learn this week that the Department of Health and Human Services has purchased 1.6 million doses of potassium iodide and plans to buy another 5 million to 10 million this year. Massachusetts congressman Edward J. Markey has sponsored a bill that would force the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to require stockpiling of the pills in the states. This would go further than current policy, which only requires states to consider maintaining supplies of potassium iodide.

The pills are no panacea in the event of a major release of radioactivity. By temporarily flooding the thyroid with iodine, they protect only against absorption of radioactive iodine, not other forms of fallout. Some public health officials have worried that, in a crisis, people might take the pill instead of evacuating, even though evacuation is the recommended response to a reactor accident. But the public's largely sensible reactions to the anthrax mailings indicate that this concern is overblown.

The nuclear power industry has had its own reason to oppose the maintenance of potassium iodide stockpiles, especially in people's homes. The pills, industry officials feared, would undercut public confidence in utilities' ability to operate the plants safely. This was never a good reason to deny the public a useful if limited safeguard. It is even less so now when it is so clear that the threat is more the diabolical schemes of terrorists than the competence of plant operators.

The most sensible plan would be to supply all households in the vicinity of nuclear plants with the pills and also store them in a number of public places, especially schools. Government stockpiles of antibiotics proved their worth in the anthrax scare. Potassium iodide is no Cipro, but it should be at hand in a crisis.

This story ran on page A18 of the Boston Globe on 1/4/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.