I was right

It was my supposition years ago that the reason that iodine fortification of foodstuffs was reduced/eliminated in the eighties was due to the fact that doctors were having a difficult time reading radioactive thyroid scans because people's thyroids were saturated with iodine.

Unfortunately the curezone search function is not working at the moment. When I am able to locate a link to the original post on the 70s study that details that difficulty with radioactive scans I will do so, and update this post.

A-Ha! Me posteth too soon. Update:

http://www.curezone.org/forums/am.asp?i=1488580&s=1#i1

From Google News Archive: The Toledo Blade, 02/28/1981

A close-up of the portion that deals with radioactive iodine thyroid scans:

And this article, from The Lakeland Ledger, 11/21/85. Please note the headline:

 EXCESSIVE IODINE IN OUR DIETS RAISES QUESTIONS ON ITS HEATH EFFECT

and from the last paragraph:

To date, there have been NO PROBLEMS associated with the increased iodine in our food supply.

I just don't know what to say about this. How on earth did reports that radioactive iodine uptake was limited because people were saturated turn into a recommendation by the United States Food and Nutrition Board that "adventitious sources of iodine in the American Food System" be replaced by compounds containing little or no iodine? When there were NO PROBLEMS associated with the "excess" iodine?

More information on recommendation of food and nutrition Board:

http://iodinehistory.blogspot.com/2013/09/goodbye-iodine-1980.html

Goodbye Iodine! 1982

Here is the recommendation that iodine fortification of foodstuffs be discontinued. I found this in "The Fortification of Foods: A Review", by Judith A. Quick and Elizabeth W. Murphy, United States Department of Agriculture, 1982

It is often stated that prior to around 1980 it was mandated that iodine be added to all commercially baked goods in the United States and that in the 1960s, for instance, each and every slice of bread contained 150mcg iodine. 

I have never been able to find the directive that iodine be added to bread, and I have searched extensively. I do know though, that potassium bromate was in use as a dough conditioner as early as the 1920s, so brominated flour was nothing new...

My personal belief that the mandate to iodize baked goods was a response to the rising rates of thyroid cancers amongst the "downwinders" due to atmospheric testing in the 1950s in Nevada. These tests exposed people to radioactive iodine 131. We'll probably never know why, exactly, iodine was present in baked goods throughout the sixties and seventies, but here is a hint, at least, as to why it was removed in the eighties.

Without further ado:

http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/CAT87209052/PDF

Page 21:

re: iodization of salt:





re: iodine fortification in general: