Government offers Postal Workers Potassium Iodide Pills

The U.S. Postal Services (USPS) says it plans on purchasing 1.6 million pills over 750,000 doses of potassium iodide to protect postal workers against thyroid cancer in the event of a radiological emergency.

Sandy Smith

Dec. 4, 2002

The pills are necessary if several conditions are met:

If a "dirty bomb" explodes;
If radioactive iodine is used in the bomb instead of other radioactive materials;
If the employee is close to the explosion when it occurs.

Potassium iodide is the only medication for internal radiation exposure to radioactive iodine.

"Employees are out there in all of these communities nationwide and we wanted to err on the side of caution," said Postal Service spokeswoman Sue Brennan.

About the Author

Sandy Smith

Sandy Smith is the former content director of EHS Today, and is currently the EHSQ content & community lead at Intelex Technologies Inc. She has written about occupational safety and health and environmental issues since 1990.