Mark -- KI and other forms of iodine have sold out as far as I can tell. However, Brown Seaweed ( Fucus Vesiculosus) aka Fucoidan is rich in iodine and they should be able to find that in Japan.

I just took a SupaFuco tablet (chewable) -- don't chew it, tastes like a beach-covered-in-brown-rotting-seaweed smells. . . Okay, chew it, follow it up with something to wash down the taste.

Russ, is that product a dietary supplement? I don't know the nutritional content of that particular product, but unfortunately, one tablet is almost certainly far too low in iodine to max out your thyroid if it's just a run-of-the-mill supplement. Honestly, I doubt that much would make any difference in terms of protecting your thyroid.

I can't believe the price gouging on these KI pills--and people are presumably paying those prices!

Yeah, I'd consider it a dietary supplement. Unfortunately, the stuff I have is marketed as a food because it's essentially just brown seaweed. The bottle I have doesn't break it down to mg of Iodine per tablet. However, from the wiki link above "The main use of bladder wrack (and other types of seaweed) in herbal medicine is as a source of iodine, an essential nutrient for the thyroid gland."

There are more concentrated forms of iodine; I started taking these and a more concentrated form called Iosol the day after the tsunami. Unfortunately, those are what have suddenly become out of stock. The peeps that really need KI are in Japan, buying it for use here in the US for this incident is a waste IMO. We don't have any KI here. If I did I'd donate it.

Amazing, isn't it? I believe the term is hysterical overreaction..

Blast thanks so much for that excellent explanation.

Edit: I have a question for you, I'm reading that coagulants work by neutralizing the charge, does that mean, then, that it would also work to break the cling between the radioactive ions and the water?

But then again, if it's like salt, and coagulants/flocculants don't remove salt from water, then I must be missing something. (My apologies for bringing this thread a little off topic.)

I would suggest that "gouging" can actually be a very good thing in the midst a disaster. It helps discourage people who don't really need something from buying up the entire limited supply.

Some people may consider it to be taking advantage of people, but what's better - Very expensive AA batteries that you can buy if you absolutely need them, of no AA batteries no matter how much you need them?

No surprise. Remember the supposed "rice shortage" a couple of years ago? People who probably never eat rice, much less cook it, were cleaning out 50lb. bags from the big box stores. We seem to have 2 speeds here, boredom and panic.

By "ions", Blast means "dissolved solids". Technically "salt" does not exist in salt water, just sodium and chlorine ions. Practically, when the water evaporates or boils away, the solid salt is left behind.

An engineer and a scientist were challenged to a race. The prize was a beautiful woman for the first one to reach here. The scientist explained that there was no point in trying, because to reach her he would first have to cross half the distance. Then he would have to cross half the remaining distance, and so on.

The engineer said "You may be right that I can never actually reach her, but I think I can get close enough for any practical purpose."

All in all, I would agree that "market dynamics" does have its benefits, even in these situations. Actually, we never really point the finger at the panic buying (or put another way, everyone suddenly buying something at the same time that is not needed), which is really the root of the issue with KI here. We don't need KI over here right now, so I wish people would refrain from depleting the supply that could be sent to Japan instead.

That said, I haven't heard of any cases of price gouging in the disaster area, although I have seen reports of merchants giving things away or at a discount. According to market theory, that's the wrong thing to do to ensure future supplies, but as a human being, isn't that what we all wished would happen, at least in the short term?

I had read the other day that Tokyo does not have a plan to distribute KI pills. It's not clear if the article was simply referring to the need to distribute it given current conditions, or was referring to an actual lack of any KI distribution plan at all. The latter would be very surprising to me.

If the latter is the case, then all the more reason why I was searching for KI pills online here to send to my friend in Tokyo, although she eventually decided to bug out of Japan.