Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 29, 1993 TAG: 9308290089
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHATTANOOGA, TENN. LENGTH: Medium
Jessie Pond had overheard her father, the TVA's manager of emergency preparedness, trying to figure out what to do with 550 cases of potassium iodide tablets past their expiration date. David Pond found his answer one night as Jessie watched a program about sharks.
"I heard them say potassium iodine, so I brought Daddy over to the TV," Jessie said. "I asked him if that's what he'd been talking about."
They learned that potassium iodide is used as a nutritional supplement to prevent goiter (enlargement of the thyroid gland) in sharks.
"We had been wondering at the office whether there was another use for the tablets," said Pond, whose agency supplies tablets to people living within 10 miles of its nuclear plants in Tennessee and Alabama.
(The tablets are used in humans to saturate the thyroid gland with clean iodine to counteract contaminated iodine that can collect in the body from a radioactive release.)
Pond called Sea World in Orlando, Fla., to see if the tablets, headed for the landfill, could be used by aquariums around the nation. Sea World officials said they could.
He arranged to make the Tennessee Aquarium the clearinghouse. Most of the 700,000 tablets were shipped to Orlando last week. The tablets will be scattered among Sea World's four sites.
Frank Murru, Sea World's general curator, estimated the worth of the donation at $7,280 to $13,650 and said the tablets may be out-of-date for humans but are still effective for sharks.
Pond said the TVA saved a few hundred dollars from not having to dump the tablets but that the best part was showing that children can make a difference.
by CNB