Postal Service Buys Pills to Protect Workers in an Attack

The U.S. Postal Service is purchasing 1.6 million doses of potassium iodide pills to protect its employees against thyroid cancer in the event of a nuclear explosion or meltdown.

Taking a cue from the anthrax scare a year ago, the postal service is spending nearly $293,000 to give its 750,000 employees the opportunity to have two days’ worth of potassium iodide tablets waiting for them at work.

The cost of buying the medication breaks down to 18.3 cents per tablet, bringing the cost of two days of protection to 37 cents per employee, the same as a first-class stamp.

The money is coming from the agency’s $70-billion budget, which is expected to have a $600-million surplus next year.

“It’s an infinitesimal fraction of a percent,” postal service spokesman Gerry Kreienkamp said Tuesday.

“It sounds like a lot of money, but in postal budget terms, it’s pocket change.”

The recommendation to purchase the tablets came from the postal service’s mail security task force, created in the month after the anthrax scare.

The postal service says the decision is not related to the agency’s response to the anthrax scare, nor is it related to a threat of nuclear terrorism specific to the postal service.

The FBI issued a general terrorism alert last month but maintains that the aviation, petroleum and nuclear sectors are the likeliest targets.

“We want to be proactive about the health and safety of our employees,” said postal service spokeswoman Sue Brennan.

“We will be able to give protection in the event of an emergency.”

The president of Anbex Inc., the New York-based company supplying the postal service with the tablets, said he sees a connection.

“The postal service got hurt by the anthrax scare and became more sensitized to national security,” Alan Morris said Tuesday.

The postal service is the first government agency to offer potassium iodide, which prevents absorption of radioactive iodine by the thyroid gland, to all its employees.

Anbex has already shipped 1 million doses.

Morris hopes that the postal service’s decision encourages other government agencies to provide similar safety measures for their employees, but he is doubtful.

“The post office now has this protection, but the police don’t have it, the fire departments don’t have it and the military doesn’t have it,” Morris said.

He occasionally fields calls from the military concerning prices and availability but receives few domestic orders, he said.

A spokesman for the White House Office of Homeland Security, Gordon Johndroe, said that his agency had not advised other government departments to provide the tablets to their employees.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has offered 34 states enough potassium iodide to give each person within 10 miles of a nuclear reactor two days’ worth of medication.

“That’s what we’ve determined is the appropriate course of action,” Johndroe said.

Anbex recommends a 14-day course of treatment. The NRC recommendation presupposes that affected people will move quickly out of the danger zone.

According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, only half of those 34 states, including California, have decided to accept the pills.

The commission will not pressure the remaining states, said Rosetta Virgilio, a NRC spokeswoman.

Although California is taking advantage of the NRC’s offer, it has not distributed the tablets.

Plans to get them to the 90,000 people living near the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station north of Oceanside and the 300,000 near the Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor in San Luis Obispo County may be finalized by the end of February of next year, said Eric Lamoureux, spokesman for the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.