The Bush administration has decided not to expand the distribution of an antiradiation treatment to U.S. residents living near nuclear power plants, a top White House science adviser announced last week (see GSN, Oct. 23, 2007).
A 2002 law required the federal government to provide potassium iodide pills to people living within 20 miles of a nuclear plant, expanding on existing rules that require supplying the drug within a 10-mile radius. The drug's distribution is intended to prevent thyroid cancer in people exposed to radiation from a power plant accident or terrorist attack.
The law, however, permits the president to waive the 20-mile distribution requirement if better cancer prevention tools are identified. John Marburger, director of the White House Science and Technology Policy Office, invoked that provision on Jan. 22.
"I have determined that a more effective preventive measure does exist for the extended zone covered by the act, namely avoidance of exposure altogether through evacuation of the potentially affected population and interdiction of contaminated food," he wrote in his decision. Evacuation, he said, would be "much more effective than the administration of [potassium iodide] in the proposed extended zone."
Marburger endorsed distributing the drug within a 10-mile zone and urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other agencies to improve such efforts.
U.S. Representative Ed Markey (D-Mass.), author of the now-waived law, complained strenuously about Marburger's decision.
"The Bush administration appears intent on politicizing every scientific decision possible, against the recommendations of the nation's scientific experts and ignoring the clear intent of the law," he said in a Friday release. "It is inexcusable that the White House would decide to leave children and their families totally unprotected from a potential meltdown or terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant" (Greg Webb, Global Security Newswire, Jan. 29).