No opinions please . . . . I can read the interwebs just as well as you. Given the fact that there's a certain contingent of @$$holes who want to wipe everyone off the face of the Earth . . . (read here: Nuclear smuggling deals 'thwarted' in Moldova - BBC News it's not a question of if, it's when they get a nuke. For those of you that have bought KI or KIO3 pills: which did you buy (links if possible) why (i.e., what was it that you read that made you settle on one over the other) if you have kids, have you come up with a dosing for them yet? FYI: I have both, but wrist-wringing over #3. Page 11 below is my only guide. http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/pub_meet/Iodine_Prophylaxis_guide.pdf
I don't have any better dozing info than what you posted. What I had found was essentially the same. I have KI. Its just what i found, no particular reason. I basically found a "supplement" that was a bit cheaper than the popular IOSAT tablets. The IOSAT product is more expensive ($.50-.65 per dose. Note; some vendors are double to triple that) but it is blister packaged and it could be good to keep a few tablets in everyone's get home bag as you need to saturate the thyroid ASAP after a close nuc event. BEWARE and don't make the same mistake I did on my first KI purchase. I found a supplement that looked good and purchased but I didn't pay close enough attention to the fine print. It had 180 tablets and was like $8 per bottle. I thought I was clever paying a small fraction of the IOSAT tablets. Dumbass. I thought I saw 225 mg but what the label actually said was 225 mcg (micrograms) of iodine. The difference between 1 mg and 1 mcg is a factor of a THOUSAND times (1 mg = 1000 mcg). So, to get 100 mg of iodine I'd need to consume 440 tablets and I'd get way too much potassium in the process. Not a total loss as I'll take one of those tablets when working in the heat to help prevent muscle cramps but basically worthless for radiation exposure mitigation. One thing you might consider is USP KI powder. It's real cheap ($.03/dose) and you can adjust dosing easily but you will need a small scale unit you get a volume measure figured out. Amazon.com: Potassium Iodide - 100% Pure USP Powder - 31% K / 69% I, 4 oz: Health & Personal Care AT
Nice find on dosages @CATO! I'm going to ask a stupid question because this is a bit confusing for me. How is the iodine discussed on this thread different than polar pure discussed here? Other than dosage? Polar Pure now back on the market | Survival Forums
Your reloading scale can maybe do that for you, converting grains to grams. A grain is a mighty small unit of weight. 7000 grains to the pound averdupois. 454 grams to the pound averdupois And the arithmetic is simple enough that I won't bore you with it here.
I'm assuming you didn't read the PDF. Polar Pure is to decontaminate water. The grains in that bottle are not to be ingested. KI or KIO3 is used as a prophylaxis immediately after a nuclear event to reduce the radioactive effects on a person's thyroid gland.
Nope. Gear Review: Polar Pure Water Disinfectant - Backpacker The stores of PP found on Amazon is either NOS, or fakes: Polar Pure Water Disinfectant
The reason . . . the DEA shut the inventor down. Federal agents say 88-year-old Saratoga man's invention is being used by meth labs - San Jose Mercury News Federal agents say 88-year-old Saratoga man's invention is being used by meth labs By Sean Webby swebby@mercurynews.com POSTED: 11/14/2011 12:00:00 AM PST0 COMMENTS| UPDATED: 4 YEARS AGO Click photo to enlarge Bob Wallace, 88, demonstrates one step in making his water purification system... (Nhat V. Meyer) Eighty-eight-year-old retired metallurgist Bob Wallace is a self-described tinkerer, but he hardly thinks of himself as the Thomas Edison of the illegal drug world. He has nothing to hide. His product is packaged by hand in a cluttered Saratoga garage. It's stored in a garden shed in the backyard. The whole operation is guarded by an aged, congenial dog named Buddy. But federal and state drug enforcement agents are coming down hard on Wallace's humble homemade solution, which he concocted to help backpackers purify water. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and state regulators say druggies can use the single ingredient in his "Polar Pure" water purifier -- iodine -- to make crystal meth. Wallace says federal and state agents have effectively put him out of business, because authorities won't clear the way for him to buy or sell the iodine he needs for his purification bottles. He has been rejected for a state permit by the Department of Justice and is scheduled to appeal his case before an administrative judge in Sacramento next month. Meanwhile, the exasperated Stanford University-educated engineer and his 85-year-old girlfriend said the government -- in its zeal to clamp down on meth labs -- has instead stopped hikers, flood victims and others from protecting themselves against a bad case of the runs. COLLATERAL DAMAGE "This old couple, barely surviving old farts, and we're supposed to be meth dealers? This is just plain stupid," Wallace said, as he sat in the nerve center of his not-so-clandestine compound surrounded by contoured hiking maps, periodic tables and the prototypes of metal snowshoes he invented a few years ago. "These are the same knotheads that make you take your shoes off in the airport." When asked about Wallace, the DEA -- which, in all fairness, does not provide security in airports -- responded in an email that some investigations revealed that methamphetamine labs were using Polar Pure. "Methamphetamine is an insidious drug that causes enormous collateral damage," wrote Barbara Carreno, a DEA spokeswoman. "If Mr. Wallace is no longer in business he has perhaps become part of that collateral damage, for it was not a result of DEA regulations, but rather the selfish actions of criminal opportunists. Individuals that readily sacrifice human lives for money." Wallace and his partner, Marjorie Ottenberg, came up with the idea about 30 years ago as they planned to scale the Popocatépetl volcano in Mexico. Hoping to avoid Montezuma's revenge, Ottenberg, a chemist by trade, read an article in Backpacker magazine about two doctors who had been infected with Giardia and recommended treating water with crystalline iodine. "We knew the water was questionable down there, so we stole their idea," Wallace said with an unapologetic grin. So in 1983, the couple began selling their brown bottles with a small sprinkling of iodine crystals -- about a quarter of an ounce -- in the bottom. Polar Pure was an instant, if modest, hit among backpackers and world travelers. It was effective, light and never expired, unlike many other products. One bottle can disinfect about 2,000 quarts of water. But about four years ago, the DEA began to look closely at the product, even citing it in a position paper, and suggested that it was being used by cranksters as well as campers. In 2007, federal regulations were passed strictly regulating the chemical. Wallace said the new rules mandated that he had to pay a $1,200 regulatory fee, get federal and state permits, keep track of exactly who was buying his product and report anyone suspicious. Wallace ignored the fee. And if they wanted a list of his customers, he fumed, all they would get would be camping equipment store managers and wholesalers. There have been two major spikes in demand for Polar Pure: One in 1999 on the eve of Y2K fears and another soon after the Japanese tsunami, when people were afraid that a radiation cloud would float across the Pacific and poison water. Wallace said he sold close to 24,000 bottles in his last few months of business at $6.50 a pop. Special Agent Richard Camps, a San Jose-based state narcotics task force commander, said he received reports of suspicious buyers. "Weird-looking people, 'Beavis and Butt-Head'-types, were coming into camping stores and buying everything they had on the shelves," Camps said. "Then they would take off into the mountains and try to cook meth with it." The DEA reported agents found Polar Pure at a meth lab they dismantled in Tennessee two years ago. SEEKING CHANGES At its height, Polar Pure was bringing in about $100,000 a year, Wallace said during an interview. "We do?" Ottenberg said in surprise. "Why don't we go on more vacations?" "Because we're too old to do anything any more," Wallace replied. In May, his Oklahoma distributor -- warned by the DEA -- said he could no longer send Wallace iodine. For Wallace to comply, the state Department of Justice fingerprinted the couple and told Wallace he needed to show them such things as a solid security system for his product. Wallace sent a photograph of Buddy sitting on the front porch. "These guys don't go for my humor," Wallace said. "Cops are the most humorless knotheads on the planet." Even so, Marco Campagna, Wallace's lawyer, promised to strengthen security and make other improvements to allay the government's concerns. Wallace is not against regulation per se, although he thinks the demand for a customer list is an invasion of privacy and a waste of time. He just feels that the feds should tweak the law to allow distributors to pay a reasonable fee: $10, for example. Wallace does not live a Pablo Escobar-like life. He putters, invents and drives his 1978 Mercedes-Benz that runs on cooking oil to the De Anza College track, where he jogs a few times a week, barefoot. His "bling" consists of a tumbled collection of obsidian, limestone and mica in the backyard. "Do I look like a mafia agent?" he said. It's not so much the financial hardship, Wallace said. It's the irritation of being prevented by what he calls an over-restrictive government to do whatever his restless mind wants to do. "What the (expletive) else am I going to do? I'm 88!" he said. "We have to do something." Contact Sean Webby at 408-920-5003. WHAT IS POLAR PURE? Polar Pure contains a small sprinkling of iodine crystals, which disinfects water tainted with bacteria. WHY DO DRUG AGENTS CARE ABOUT IT? Federal drug agents suspected methamphetamine-makers were using the iodine to make drugs, and strict regulations on the chemical were approved. WHAT does it all mean for WALLACE? Wallace said the new rules ordered him to pay a fee, get permits, and keep track of buyers. But his iodine distributor -- warned by the DEA -- won't sell to him.
Locally they handed out KI (Iosat specifically) based on the size of the family and age of the members. It's what we have and when I did my initial research I was tempted to discount KIO3. Deeper research found basically what you found, the WHO and CDC discuss both as though equal (although KI03 may be a bit of a stomach irritant to some people). It looks like, from the doses, that either KIO3 isn't quite as potent or doesn't have quite the same amount of free Iodine but that's just my layman's interpretation. If I had to choose one, I would probably choose KI. If I had to take what was given to me because I was out or couldn't get to mine, I would take either.
I bought all of my Polar Pure years ago, and I thought they were back in business. I don't think the Polar Pure being sold on Amazon is fake, or they reviews would suggest this. But, Polar Pure isn't manufacturing their product any longer, it seems. We may need to update and cross-link our earlier thread. Polar Pure now back on the market | Survival Forums However, after doing some searching I found this little nugget: Polar Pure available again... and why that might not really matter. - Ecoculture Village's Survival Ways So, it appears that Polar Pure iodine can still be purchased, but it's not the same company, and the new supplier does have the proper DEA certification, although it may be a shady outfit. I could only suggest "buyer beware", but also not completely write-off the product unless we know for certain if the new Polar Pure is usable. It's only supposed to be pure iodine in crystal form, so testing it shouldn't be too difficult. If it contains other ingredients, it should also be labelled.
The original question was for use in a Nuclear situation, what dosage, @CATO seemed to think you could not use Polar Pure for that purpose and was asking about KI and KIO3 and I thought you could use Polar Pure for that purpose but I cant find the type of iodine, it looks like pure crystiline but no chemical breakdown to determine this for sure. So back to the original question of using in a nuclear situation.
@Ganado My reasons for stating PP cannot be ingested comes from the warning label on the bottle that says "harmful if swallowed." Again, according to the bottle, it is 99.5% crystalline iodine. It doesn't say what the other 0.5% are.
Elemental Iodine is Toxic.. That is what makes it a Good Disinfectant.... Potassium Iodide is a Salt, and can be ingested, in small quantities, to Flood your system with Iodide Ions so that any RadioActive Iodide Ions created in a NukeBlast or Release can't become part of your Chemistry, and cause Cancer, as they decay. Stick with the Iodide Salts, follow the Recommended Dosages, and be SAFE......
