18 March 2011
Run on Potassium Iodide–Shortages for those who really need it? (Science illiteracy has consequences)
Posted by Dan Satterfield
I listened to a great interview on The World as I drove home for dinner tonight. Laurie Garrett, Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations, had some choice words for those who have bought out the supply of potassium iodide here in the U.S. She basically called stupid, the Americans who bought and started taking the tablets.
Click image and then listen to the interview.
If things got much worse in Japan, they may actually need extra supplies of these tablets. Garrett has a point. A very good example of how scientific illiteracy has consequences. It’s also shameful behavior IMHO.
Update: I expected that reports would be forthcoming of illnesses due to people taking these tablets and they have arrived.
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.
I didn’t really think to take a lot of pictures once power was back. If I hadn’t been so focused on Fukushima 1 I probably would have thought to. However, by that time almost a week later as I said the vast majority of damage that was particularly interesting to see had already been cleared out or patched over anyhow.
We really didn’t get hit hard at all compared to the coast. As I understand it, at one school the entire staff and student body perished. Not a single one made it.
At another, the principal and vice-principal who were spared as they had been on errands returned to find a similar situation–every single person for whom they held responsibility was gone.
Andrew: I imagine a lot of those people will be in coping mode now, and will have PTSD forever after.
A small portable generator might be as handy as a first-aid kit in our world of cell phones and electronic do-dads. I have a well for by drinking water, my oil heat needs a power source, I have a small generator to keep my family safe when the power grid goes down here in Ohio. In the summer it saves my food from spoiling and keeps my bathroom working , during a blizzard it helps keep us alive.