1) Potassium iodide only helps prevent YOUR THYROID from developing cancer due to radiation exposure...it DOES NOT do anything else for any other radiation effects on your body.
2) When out of fear you stockpile something you do not need...you remove its availibility from those who really do need it.
3) Even when Chernobyl's fallout went around the world and over the US multiple times...we were only exposed to 1/10th the radiation in a CHEST X-RAY.
4) Winds are offshore...so there is little likelihood any radiation will even affect the U.S. in any capacity.
5) Radiation disperses over oceans and becomes inactive...most of it dissipating before it would ever hit any land or environment as it rolled around on the winds again, even if the wind direction changed.
6) You people who have bought a ton of potassium iodide and are now selling it on ebay for a ton of money per bottle should be ashamed of yourselves.
Radiation is all around us and it's perfectly normal and safe. Bananas are radioactive. So are microwave ovens, cell phones and X-rays, even people. Every year, just walking around on the planet, each of us is exposed to about 3.5 millisieverts (mSv) of radiation. That is the equivalent of approximately 94 chest X-rays.
In order to get radiation sickness you need to be exposed to 1,000 mSv at once. For most people radiation would be fatal at about 5,000 mSv.
To put this in perspective, the radiation levels at the nuclear plant in Japan are about 400 mSv. That means you would have to sit there for two and a half hours to get sick. (AND YES...those poor people in the immediate area and the workers IN the nuclear power plants are being exposed to toxic levels over a long period of time).
Many foods are naturally radioactive, and bananas are particularly so, due to the radioactive potassium-40, or 40K they contain. Bananas are radioactive enough to regularly cause false alarms on radiation sensors used to detect possible illegal smuggling of nuclear material at US ports. A medium sized banana contains about 450 mg of Potassium. 0.0117%, or about 53 μg of this being 40K. 53 μg of 40K produces 14radioactive decays per second (dps), or 0.00037 μCi of radiation. If the banana is eaten, the dose equivalent is about 0.01 mrem.[ 0.01 mrem is equivalent to 0.1 μSv.]
A radiation dose equivalent of 100 μSv (10 mrem, or 1,000 BED) increases an average adult human's risk of death by about one micromort – the same risk as eating 40 tablespoons of peanut butter, or of smoking 1.4 cigarettes.
Nearly all foods are slightly radioactive. All food sources combined expose a person to around 0.4 mSv (40 mrem or 4,000 BED) per year on average, or more than 10% of the total dose from all natural and man-made sources.
Some other foods that have above-average levels are potatoes, kidney beans, nuts, and sunflower seeds. Among the most naturally radioactive foods known are Brazil nuts, with activity levels that can exceed 444 Bq/kg (12,000 pCi/kg).
