Nuclear Jitters : Northern Californians Have Got It Bad in Wake of Soviet Plant Disaster

Gas masks, anti-contamination suits and freeze-dried foods have been brisk sellers in parts of the San Francisco Bay Area for several days, as jittery Northern Californians took extraordinary precautions against fallout from the Soviet nuclear disaster.

Tearful mothers from throughout the region were telephoning state health and air pollution authorities, asking when it would be safe for their babies to play outside again. One anxious pregnant woman hid in her basement for two days. Several residents of rural Plumas County in northeast California stocked up on milk and meat, one health official said.

By far, most people in the area have taken the matter in stride, but even a few of the area’s less-excitable residents conceded that they had taken iodine-rich kelp capsules and sheltered backyard gardens from the rain--”just in case,” said one insurance broker, asking not to be named.

Fallout from the April 26 accident at the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant apparently has not caused the same degree of concern in Southern California, which was not in the path of the high-level clouds bearing the radioactivity. However, those atmospheric clouds--and news accounts of their movement--have cast an anxious shadow over parts of the Northwest.

“The news--and the lack of news--has caused a lot of people to take some precautions,” said Anthony Cucchiara, owner of Traders, an Army surplus store in San Leandro, near San Francisco. “It has sure panicked some people out.”

During a press briefing Monday atop the state Department of Health Services toxicology laboratory in Berkeley, state health director Dr. Kenneth Kizer made an unusually blunt plea to northern state residents:

“Please, people, stop going out and panicking,” he said. “There is just not a reason to panic.”

Radiation monitors, including several special devices set up in response to the Chernobyl disaster, showed absolutely no increase beyond normal background radiation levels anywhere in the state, he said.

This word came despite reports from the National Weather Service that a slightly radioactive cloud from the Soviet Union had been detected at 30,000 feet above the Pacific Coast. Some weather forecasters predicted that rain showers Monday and Tuesday could bring some radioactivity down on Northern California, but rainfall was so slight that it could not even be measured for radiation, state officials said.

Even before traces of radioactive rainwater were detected in Washington state, at levels far too low to endanger people there, authorities said, the mere possibility of its falling apparently was enough to panic some residents here.

Bill Ihle, a spokesman for the state health department, said late Monday that he had just gotten off the phone with a “hysterically crying woman” who wanted to know how to protect her children.

“She didn’t want them consumed by the (radioactive) cloud,” he said.

Paul Bryant of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District said his agency has fielded similar calls, including one from the pregnant woman who had been living in her basement to protect her unborn child. Bryant recommended that she consult her doctor rather than continue to hide.

Want to Know

“I’d say, though, that 80% or 90% (of the callers) just wanted to know if there was a danger,” Bryant said.

Still, Cucchiara, owner of the surplus store, said he had sold more than 600 modern German military gas masks ($12.95 apiece) and all 30 of the plastic anti-contamination suits worn by nuclear plant workers ($49.95 each) that he had in stock “in a very short span of time.”

Freeze-dried food and iodine water-purification tablets also sold briskly, he said.

“We’re hardly in the camping season, so this stuff normally wouldn’t sell at all this time of year,” he said.

David Myers, a health physicist at the University of California’s Lawrence Livermore Laboratory was skeptical of the efficacy of any of the protective devices being sold--even if there were any detectable radiation threat.

“It’s just not a reasonable expense,” he said. “It’s just not necessary when you are dealing with minute levels of radiation--fractions of background (levels). And no one is even reporting that.”

In any case, he said, the gas masks and other items being sold “may or may not be designed to filter out what we are dealing with here.”

“A gas mask can be designed to filter anything, such as carbon monoxide,” he said. “That wouldn’t help with radioactive material, even if there was any that needed filtering.”

Potassium iodide tablets and other sources of iodine also have been subject to unusual sales, pharmacists reported. Iodine saturates the thyroid gland and can prevent the accumulation of radioactive iodine there. However, potassium iodide is sold only by prescription and can have harmful side effects.

‘Calls All Week’

“It is nothing overwhelming, but we’ve had calls all week from our regular customers and some new ones too,” said one pharmacist at Disernia’s Pharmacy in San Francisco’s Mission District. He asked not to be named.

He said that when he tells them that potassium iodide can be dispensed only by prescription, “they usually want to know if there are any alternatives.” At that point, he said, he usually advises them to forget it.

“I tell them I think it’s all academic, how much radiation you’ll get this way,” he said, “and they seem to accept that.”