Unethical human experimentation in the United States
In 1953, the AEC ran several studies at the University of Iowa on the health effects of radioactive iodine in newborns and pregnant women. In one study, researchers gave pregnant women from of iodine-131, in order to study the women's aborted embryos in an attempt to discover at what stage, and to what extent, radioactive iodine crosses the placental barrier. In another study, they gave 25 newborn babies (who were under 36 hours old and weighed from ) iodine-131, either by oral administration or through an injection, so that they could measure the amount of iodine in their thyroid glands, as iodine would go to that gland.
Iodine in biology
Elemental iodine (I) is poisonous if taken orally in large amounts; 2–3 grams is a lethal dose for an adult human. Potassium iodide, on the other hand, has a median lethal dose (LD) that is relatively high in several other animals: in rabbits, it is 10 g/kg; in rats, 14 g/kg, and in mice, 22 g/kg. The tolerable upper intake level for iodine as established by the Food and Nutrition Board is 1,100 µg/day for adults. The safe upper limit of consumption set by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in Japan is 3,000 µg/day.