Answer to Question #7799 Submitted to "Ask the Experts"

There is no magic pill that offers immunity against radiation or makes a person more resistant to the effects of radiation. There are, however, a number of medications with very specific applications that may be useful in treating people who have been irradiated or have radioactive contamination inside their bodies. For example:

• There is a class of drugs called "colony stimulating factors" that help in recovery from radiation sickness. This class of drugs works by stimulating stem cells in the bone marrow to make more blood cells. These patients may also need antibiotics and electrolytes and should be treated under supervision of competent medical authority.
  
  
• There is a pill called potassium iodide (KI) that can help protect the thyroid gland from radioactive iodine. This drug works by saturating the thyroid gland with normal stable iodine, which the thyroid needs for its proper functioning. When the thyroid is fully saturated, it will not absorb any radioactive iodine that may be circulating in the blood. KI needs to be taken up to 24 hours before or a few hours after exposure to be effective.
  
  
• There are also various drugs that can help excrete radioactive materials from the body. These drugs are usually very specific and only work for one or two types of radioactive materials. For example, the drug Prussian blue (PB), which is a capsule, works to eliminate radioactive cesium from the body by trapping it in the gut and excreting it through feces. The drug diethylentriamene pentaacetate (DTPA), which is an injection, works by latching on to radioactive plutonium or americium molecules and excreting them in urine. This process is called chelation and the drugs are called chelators. The idea is that the faster these radioactive materials are excreted from the body, the less radiation dose they deliver to the body.

The drugs I mentioned are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and you can find additional detailed information about them at this FDA website. More general fact sheets about these FDA-approved drugs are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

There are also a number of other countermeasures which are not FDA-approved, but you can see their listing at the Radiation Event Medical Management (REMM) website. 

While reading this material, you should note that:

1. All these drugs are helpful only in certain specific situations. None of them offers general protection against radiation.
   
   
2. These drugs do not eliminate or reverse any damage already done by a high dose of radiation, nor can they immediately or completely cleanse the body of contamination that is inside the body.
   
   
3. If you think you may have some residual contamination on your self, the best thing to do is to carefully remove your clothing (be careful not to breathe in the dust), bag the clothes, and take a shower, rinsing your hair and gently washing your body with mild soap and water. This will minimize the chances of getting that radioactive material inside your body by breathing or swallowing it. If no shower or water is available, using moist wipes to clean your hands and face will be effective too.

And remember: "It is the dose that makes a poison." If an individual is irradiated with a small dose of radiation or small amounts of radioactive materials are inhaled or ingested, that does not necessarily mean that the individual will experience health problems or that he/she requires medical intervention.

The best approach in a radiation emergency is to take steps to reduce your level of exposure to radiation or chances of becoming contaminated in the first place. You can do this by listening to public announcements from emergency response and public health authorities (through radio and television) and following their instructions.

Armin Ansari, PhD, CHP