State Distributing Potassium Iodide Pills Tomorrow

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

August 10, 2011 | 3:52 PM

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Three Mile Island

Don’t worry – this story isn’t as scary as the headline makes it out to be.
State officials are distributing potassium iodide pills to people who live within ten miles of Pennsylvania’s five nuclear power plants tomorrow. The Harrisburg Patriot-News and York Daily Record have more on where you can pick the free tablets up.
The pills can be used to protect thyroid glands from radioactive fallout caused by a nuclear accident.
Relax, though: everything’s fine at Beaver Valley Power Station, Limerick Generating Station, Susquehanna Steam Electric Station, Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station, and Three Mile Island. The state Department of Health simply schedules potassium iodide distribution every few months, so that people have the pills available in a worst-case scenario. As the DOH press release explains, “this distribution is intended for people who were unable to take advantage of past KI offerings, have recently moved near nuclear power facilities, or are unaware that free KI tablets are regularly available through county and municipal health departments and state health centers.”