Pickering residents feel impact of Japan’s nuclear crisis
Posted March 16, 2011 8:29 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
PICKERING, On. – People who live near the nuclear plant in Pickering have felt the impact from the nuclear crisis in Japan.
In the ten years Janice Marks has worked at Bay Ridges pharmacy, she said she has never seen such a demand for iodine pills.
The drug store is just 3 km from Pickering’s Ontario Power Generation and has been one of several dispensing free potassium iodide pills over the years to people who live around the plant.
The pills are used to protect people from radioactive iodine, and are commonly used when a radioactive accident has happened.
“Today alone we’ve already had four people,” Marks said Tuesday. “That doesn’t seem like a lot, but for here it is. Normally, I might get four people in a year.”
Marks chalks up the sudden demand for the pills to the news of the events in Japan, following the massive earthquake that devastated parts of the country on Friday, and the fact that many of her customers live close to the Pickering nuclear plant.
Bay Ridges is one of five drug stores listed by Emergency Management Ontario, dispensing the pills for free to people living within 10 km of the Pickering plant. The same program is in effect for people living close to the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station.
“A few people have come in and expressed that they’re afraid … that the same thing could happen here with an earthquake,” Marks said. “They’re afraid nuclear power stations are not prepared to handle these kinds of emergencies.”
Pharmacist Gamil Gayed of Liverpool Pharmacy, located in the Liverpool Road and Bayly Street area of Pickering, said he has also seen the same spike over the last few days.
He gave out two bottles on Tuesday, and at least six on Monday.
