Transcript – Myth4

[ Music ] ^M00:00:10

[Person 1:] I heard and I don’t know how accurate this is, but I heard that there is a pill that you can take to stop radiation contamination if there is a dirty bomb or power plant leak.

[Person 2:] I’m not sure about medicines for it, but I think there are foods you can eat that help, right? It’s like the antioxidants can get rid of the radiation or something like that.

[Person 3:] I don’t know the names of them, but I remember the people in Japan were taking a pill to help with radiation. So, I can’t imagine the government doesn’t have some somewhere.

[Vivi:] So people are kind of all over the map with this topic – some people think there is one medicine that will treat all radiation injuries, others think there are natural remedies. During the Fukushima emergency, people in the United States started purchasing potassium iodide, and the media reported widespread outages on the West Coast. The thing was, no one in the United States actually needed potassium iodide.

[Armin:] This is something we encounter a lot, and not just among members of the public. Many healthcare professionals are also unclear about medical countermeasures that are available for treating people and what these countermeasures can or cannot do.

[Vivi:] Can you explain what medical countermeasures are available in the event of a radiation emergency? Is there an anti-radiation pill?

[Armin:] We need to be very clear – there is no such thing as an “anti-radiation pill.” What we do have are drugs – we call them countermeasures – that can be used to block the uptake of radioactive material, speed up the removal of internal contamination, and help the body recover from radiation exposure. Each countermeasure only does one of these things. And for the ones that block the uptake or speed up the removal of radioactive material, they only work for certain types of radioactive material. There is no magic pill that renders a person resistant to radiation or cures radiation sickness.

[Vivi:] Countermeasures are a perfect example of why communicating radiation risk to people can be so hard – there is a lot of background information that people just don’t know about, and that leads to confusion about what each countermeasure does and when to take them. An additional challenge communicators will face regarding countermeasures involves the availability and distribution of these medicines. Most health departments already have risk communication plans to support Points of Dispensing and mass vaccination operations, so they are familiar with the communication needs for this type of health response. The challenge during a radiation emergency will be combating rumors about shortages, confusion about who should receive medical countermeasures, and misinformation about natural or alternative treatment options. If people take medicine when it’s not needed, it can be harmful.

[Armin:] Vivi, you mentioned confusion about who should receive the countermeasures, and I’d like to provide an example of why this can be so challenging, and it comes back to radiation dose. If you’re a clinician treating a group of people – including infants, children, pregnant women, adults, elderly patients – if every one of your patients has received the same radiation dose, it would be prudent to give priority to the very young and the pregnant women.

[Vivi:] Why is that?

[Armin:] That’s because children are still developing and they also have longer to live after a radiation exposure, so they are at greater risk for developing cancer later in life. And for pregnant women, the concern is the effects to the unborn child. I think most people would understand this reasoning and be okay with triaging and prioritizing the administration of countermeasures in this way. But it could get trickier when you’re dealing with people who have received different doses of radiation. What if we have an adult who received a higher dose than a child? It may be medically necessary to treat the adult, while the smaller dose to the child may not warrant medication. How do you tell a parent that their child does not need a countermeasure that someone else is receiving?

[Vivi:] That’s exactly why communicators need to provide clear, concise, and accurate information about who needs which countermeasures – including the rationale for triaging people based on their dose and their potential for long-term health effects. In some cases, the real challenge may be telling people why they don’t need countermeasures.

[Armin:] Exactly. ^M00:04:39

[ Music ]