Oklahoma, America’s Iodine King

• Logan Layden
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  Logan Layden is a reporter and managing editor for StateImpact Oklahoma. He is a native of McAlester, Oklahoma and graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2009. Logan spent three years as a state capitol reporter and local host of All Things Considered for NPR member station KGOU in Norman and six years as a reporter with StateImpact from 2011 to 2017. Most recently, he was news director for McAlester Radio before returning to public radio in 2020.

Logan Layden / StateImpact Oklahoma

Iodine pellets, known as 'prills', the end result of the refining process at Woodward Iodine Corporation in Woodward, Okla.

Iodine is vital. The human body depends on it for cell reproduction. It’s irreplaceable in medical imaging. There’s a tiny bit of the element in every LCD TV screen.

The vast majority of the world’s supply of iodine comes from three places: The Chilean desert, natural gas fields east of Tokyo, and the Woodward Trench in northwest Oklahoma.

The three companies that dominate U.S. iodine production drill into the same geologic formations as energy firms, but make their money off of a substance the oil and gas companies usually throw away.