Is it appropriate to take iodine tablets in advance, or even often, to prevent nuclear bomb explosions, nuclear power plant leaks, and nuclear radiation?
The standard answer is: not suitable.
Because normal people are not deficient in iodine, if they take iodine tablets frequently, it will lead to excessive iodine, which will cause various diseases such as hyperthyroidism. Therefore, although iodine is an essential element for the human body, it cannot be eaten too much. Of course, taking a little iodine once in a while is harmless. The problem is that you don’t know when the nuclear warhead will explode, or when the nuclear power plant will leak. To prevent nuclear radiation, don’t you need to take iodine tablets every day? This will inevitably lead to long-term iodine excess.
The commonly used iodine tablet ingredient is Potassium Iodine Liquid. The most common ones are 100 or 130 mg. This dose is the daily preventive dose for an ordinary adult man. Half for pregnant women and children aged 3 to 12. For children under 3 years old, take a quarter of the dose. Consuming too much iodine can damage your health. Some people even worry that the iodine added to table salt will cause disease. In fact, this situation is extremely rare, because the iodine content in table salt is very small, which is several orders of magnitude lower than that of iodine tablets.
Some people think that eating iodized salt every day can replace iodine tablets. This is wrong. Although commercially available edible iodized salt contains stable iodine, since the iodine content of iodized salt is stipulated in my country as 30 mg per kilogram, 0.3 mg of iodine can be obtained by consuming 10 g of iodized salt per person per day. Compared with the daily dose of Potassium Iodine Liquid iodine tablets recommended by the Ministry of Health for radiation prevention, adults are 100 mg and children are 50 mg. Adults need to ingest about 3 kg of iodized salt and children about 1.5 kg at a time to achieve the preventive effect, which is far beyond what humans can achieve. Tolerated salt intake limit. As recommended by the World Health Organization, potassium iodide should not be used as a general protective measure in anticipation of an event. Potassium iodide tablets should only be taken when expressly directed by the competent public health authority.
