GLOBE EDITORIAL

FOLLOWING the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in 1986, there were virtually no cases of thyroid cancer in many nearby areas because residents quickly took potassium iodide pills. In areas without the pills, many cases of the cancer, especially among children, were reported as a result of the accident's release of radioactivity. That and the Sept. 11 attacks spurred Massachusetts to become a leader in making the pills available to anyone within 10 miles of a nuclear plant. But since then, both the Romney and Bush administrations have lagged in following up on clear legislative mandates to make the pills more available.

Historically, opposition to the pills came from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which feared they could undercut confidence in the safety of nuclear power. Sept. 11 helped lay that self-serving concern to rest, since it showed that terrorists could turn even a safely operated nuclear plant into a disaster. The NRC currently supports limited use of the pills. No one contends that they substitute for evacuation or protective shelter, since they protect against just one of the radioisotopes that a damaged reactor could emit, but they do so cheaply, at about 20 cents a pill, and effectively.

Both the state Legislature and the US Congress passed new laws in 2002 on distribution of the pills. The state law called for distribution on Cape Cod and the islands, which are downwind from the Plymouth power plant, and Cape Ann, which is near the Seabrook, N.H., plant. The federal law called for pills to be available within 20 miles of plants. But four years later, there is limited progress.

The federal law required the Department of Health and Human Services to draw up guidelines for stockpiling and distributing the pills. The draft that HHS has finally produced, four years later, still leaves Representative Edward Markey extremely dissatisfied. He found the guidelines provide little real advice on stockpiling and distribution of the pills and even raise doubts about their effectiveness, though they have been recommended by the Food and Drug Administration and the World Health Organization.

The state says that flaws in the 2002 law and the difficulty of getting the affected towns to sign up for the pills have slowed their distribution. But a letter that the head of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, Cristine McCombs, sent to HHS in 2004 suggests the pills are a low priority. She wrote that the state sees the pills' benefits to be ''marginal at best" in comparison with evacuation or sheltering and opposes the 20-mile distribution zone, despite the Legislature's vote for pills beyond 20 miles.

Both Congress and the Legislature should call on the foot-draggers to get moving, and explain why the public does not have millions more of these pills ready to be used in an emergency.

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