Thousands of letters processed since the anthrax incidents began may be lightly contaminated with anthrax after coming into contact with letters filled with spores, officials said yesterday.

“There seems to be the potential for not just hundreds and not just thousands but tens of thousands and maybe more letters to be potentially at risk for some level of cross-contamination,” said U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Jeffrey Koplan.

Such contamination may be responsible for the deaths of Kathy Nguyen and Ottilie Lundgren, officials said.  Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said, however, that there was no evidence of a widespread threat to public health.

“The risk to any one individual is low,” Koplan said.  People with compromised immune systems, however, may want to take precautions such as having another person open their mail, according to officials.

Officials also said yesterday that anthrax spores might have been spread in postal centers not just by mail-sorting machines (see GSN, Dec. 4), but also by mail-stamping equipment.  When a letter is stamped, there is “a physical ramming of the letter by the stamping device that in itself may cause some dispersion through the envelope in some way,” Koplan said.  If one stamping machine was contaminated, spores could spread to others nearby, he added (Eric Lipton, New York Times, Dec. 4). 

Irradiation or Detection?

The U.S. Postal Service may move away from irradiating mail to a plan that would focus on detecting anthrax spores and other agents, according to postal industry sources (see GSN, Nov. 30).

“Postal officials have made abundantly clear that they do not like the option of radiating mail and would like to take whatever steps they can to get out of the mail radiation business,” said Association for Postal Commerce President Gene Del Polito.

The Postal Service, however, said in a statement: “We remain committed to detecting and removing biohazards from the mail.  The safety of our employees and the public is paramount.”

Mailers’ Council Executive Director Robert McLean, along with Del Polito, said the Postal Service wanted to choose detection first over irradiation because it is more efficient.  “They just told us that they think it would be more efficient, would be less expensive and would not delay the mail as much,” McLean said.

The Postal Service would like $307 million for detecting equipment, such as a “particle-size and density analyzer,” which can determine if particles in a certain size range are biological or not, officials told Congress. 

“Both [irradiation and detection] systems are going to be costly,” McLean said.  “The question is, is it necessary to irradiate every piece of mail, or is the science behind the detection equipment such that [only] if it is detected would you move into irradiation?” (Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, Dec. 4)

Gas Decontamination Considered for Other Buildings

It will take about five days to know if chlorine dioxide gas pumped into the Hart Senate Office Building killed anthrax there (see GSN, Dec. 4), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials said yesterday.

Before the gas was pumped into Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s (D-S.D.) offices, about 3,000 test strips coated with bacteria stronger than anthrax were placed throughout the suite, according to the Washington Times.  The strips have been collected, and if the bacteria on them are found to be dead, it will be assumed that the anthrax inside the offices is dead as well. 

If the gas method works in the Hart building, it may be used to decontaminate the Brentwood Road postal facility, also in Washington, postal officials said.  Richard Rupert, the EPA’s on-site coordinator for the Hart building cleanup, said it was likely the gas method would be pushed for Brentwood, but he was “not sure if it could be used successfully in that space.”

It was still unknown as of yesterday when the Hart building would reopen, the Times reported.  “I hope to have my work done here by Christmas,” Rupert said.  “Having all of the anthrax out by then would be my present to the U.S. Capitol” (Guy Taylor, Washington Times, Dec. 4).

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