Company Cuts off Canada's Supply of Antifallout Pills

U.S. Manufacturer Likely Stockpiling Drug in Case of Terrorist Attacks, Official Says

December 5, 2002 – Page A6
By Martin Mittelstaedt, Environment Reporter

The only licensed supplier of pills to combat fallout from nuclear power-plant accidents or nuclear attack has stopped shipping the medication to Canada, a Health Canada official says.

The official said the Canadian government believes that the U.S. manufacturer wants to keep supplies of the drug, potassium iodide, in the United States in case of terrorist attacks against U.S. nuclear installations.

"The company has made a business decision to keep most of its supply in the United States," said Slavica Vlahovich, medical adviser with Health Canada's radiation-protection bureau. "They have made a decision to no longer distribute it to Canada. So this is our current dilemma."

Some critics of the nuclear industry said the move means Canadians could be vulnerable if there is a major accident at a nuclear plant or a terrorist attack. Ms. Vlahovich discounted those risks.

Ms. Vlahovich said Medpointe Inc. of New Jersey informed the government last summer that it would no longer ship to Canada. She said there was no explanation, but Canadian officials believed the company has redirected supplies to U.S. buyers.

Medpointe manufactures Thyroblock, a pill containing potassium iodide. The drug prevents or reduces the chance of thyroid cancer, the most common cancer in people exposed to radioactive fallout from power-plant accidents such as the one at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986. Taken before or shortly after exposure to fallout, it saturates the thyroid gland with the iodine compound, blocking uptake of the radioactive forms of iodine common in fallout.

Medpointe chairman Anthony Wild declined to be interviewed directly. But replying to a question relayed through a subordinate, he said the company no longer has approval to ship to Canada.

"They cannot ship out of the country, from what I was told. They cannot ship into Canada," the subordinate said. The company declined to elaborate.

The federal government has viewed the curtailment as serious enough to prompt discussions with the provinces.

"That's why we're sitting down with provinces to discuss how we can solve this problem, how we can obtain a new supply," Ms. Vlahovich said.

The provinces have enough potassium iodide to meet immediate requirements under their emergency nuclear-disaster plans, although the medication has a shelf life of five years and all stocks will have to be replaced. "Eventually, it will become a problem. We are trying to find a solution before it becomes a problem," she said.

There is a second U.S. manufacturer of the drug, but Medpointe's Thyroblock is the only product Health Canada licenses for import.

The federal and provincial governments do not maintain stockpiles large enough to handle a serious accident such as occurred at Chernobyl. Provinces with atomic-power plants -- Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick -- generally stockpile enough pills to give one to each person living within 10 kilometres of a nuclear power plant.

Ontario has an supply of 200,000 pills in case of an accident at the Pickering nuclear station, in the lakefront suburbs that hug Toronto's eastern edge, and 100,000 for the Darlington plant at Bowmanville, about 40 kilometres further east. Nuclear expert David Martin said these supplies would be inadequate to handle an accident at Pickering that leads to fallout over Toronto.

"We're going to need not tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, not 300,000; we're going to need several million doses," if Toronto receives fallout, said Mr. Martin, nuclear consultant to the Sierra Club of Canada.

After Chernobyl, high levels of radioactivity were found as far as 500 kilometres from the plant, says a World Health Organization report on potassium iodide.

At the time of the Chernobyl disaster, the WHO report said, the Polish government supplied potassium-iodide pills to 10 million children and to seven million adults.

This is an effort Canada could not match because of its relatively small supplies.

Having stockpiles of the drug ready for immediate distribution is critical because potassium iodide is useful only if taken within a few hours of exposure to fallout.

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