Fearing a nuclear meltdown in quake-hit Japan, Canadians living on the Pacific Coast are ignoring health authorities and emptying pharmacies of anti-radiation medicines, media said Tuesday.
“There is definitely a panic,” pharmacist Cristina Alarcon told public broadcaster CBC. Health officials dismissed the risk of radiation spreading from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in northeastern Japan to Canada’s westernmost province of British Columbia.
And they urged people to cease stockpiling potassium iodide after a run on pharmacies in Vancouver and Victoria. British Columbia’s health officer said it would take up to six days for winds to carry nuclear particles across the Pacific Ocean and most of the radiation would have dispersed into the atmosphere by then.
“The consumption of iodide tablets is not a necessary precaution as there is no current risk of radiological exposure,” provincial health officer Perry Kendall said in a statement.
“Even if radiation from Japan ever made it to British Columbia, our prediction based on current information is that it would not pose any significant health risk,” Kendall said. The UN’s health agency said iodine pills are “not radiation antidotes” and offer no protection against radioactive elements such as caesium, stressing they also carried health risks for some people, including pregnant women.
Ottawa, March 15, 2011 (AFP)
