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U.S. Postal Service Completes Installation of Anthrax Detectors; No Positive Findings Yet
Anthrax detection systems installed by the U.S. Postal Service at mail processing facilities around the country have yet to detect one letter carrying the deadly agent, the Colorado Springs Gazette reported last week (see GSN, Nov. 3). The Postal Service finished installing almost 300 systems around the country in early December. Since installation began in 2002, approximately 22 billion pieces of mail have been scanned. “The good news is we haven’t detected any anthrax-tainted mail at any of our facilities in the U.S. mail system,” said Postal Service spokesman Al DeSarro. The Denver Mail Processing and Distribution Center, which processes 9 million pieces of mail each day, received the Biohazard Detection System in October 2004. The Colorado Springs processing facility received the system in July 2005 and scans 1.6 million pieces of mail each day. The two facilities screen most first-class parcels sent within the state. However, some mail headed to rural areas might not go through either of these facilities, DeSarro said. “Not all mail is screened. We had to take the majority of where the population centers and the mail are, and so there are parts of the mail that don’t (get screened), and it depends on the state,” DeSarro said. Homeland security expert and Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy senior fellow Charles Pena questioned spending for the program. He said that anthrax is hard to obtain and would not be expected to cause mass casualties. “You don’t mean to be insensitive, but when you’re looking at the expenditure of dollars, that’s one factor that needs to be looked at,” he said, adding that greater threats come from shoulder-fired missiles fired at airplanes and lax security at ports (Pam Zubeck, The Gazette, Jan. 7).
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