the radioactive iodine from the environment. you also get it in table salt, but if you take a gigantic amount of it, it fills up your thyroid and is a protective measure against thyroid cancer, and that s the reason for that. people who live near nuclear power plants in the united states are advised to keep a supply of potassium iodine in their medicine cabinets in case there s an accident. okay. nbc s bob bazell there in tokyo. i m sure we ll check in with you again. thanks for joining us live. meantime, we are getting some incredible new pictures in of the tsunami s impact, and you re about to see this amateur video. it shows the immense power there. entire towns were completely inundated as the surging waters swept away the cars, buses, homes in their path. look at that bus, trying to out-run the water. see that one going on the side? they re like, get me out of here. joining me live on the phone from tokyo is umiko ono with the wall street journal japan online edition. with a
checked for radiation on their way out and stuff like that. but so far, that hasn t happened. it s preparatory. the officials are trying to maintain a balance between not saying that everything s okay and not panicking people at the same time. so, this is a very, very tenuous situation. it s still not going to be under control, if it is, for several more days. yeah. and real quick, bob, we heard about the preparation efforts to pass out these iodine pills yesterday. do you know if that has been done, if it is necessary to be done? reporter: well, it s necessary to be done. i don t know how much of it has been given out, but iodine pills are necessary because one of the things that s released from a nuclear reactor is the radiation that causes thyroid cancer. and people are very susceptible to that, and it s one of the things that you combat is by taking potassium iodine, which fills up your thyroid with iodine so you get much less of