MAIL CLEANSING ACTIVITIES

DECONTAMINATED MAIL MAY HOLD CLUES TO TERRORIST

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- November 16, 2001.  Postal inspectors have begun examining decontaminated mail that was at the Brentwood processing facility when it was shut down after anthrax infected several workers there.

The inspectors are hoping to find clues that will help them catch the person who sent the anthrax spores through the mail. Seventeen people have contracted the potentially deadly disease -- including 10 who inhaled spores and developed inhalation anthrax, deadlier than anthrax caught by skin contact.

Four people, including two postal workers at Washington's Brentwood facility, died.

In response to the outbreak, the postal service began decontaminating mail from Brentwood.

Now, as the mail is returned to Washington, residential and commercial mail is being sorted from government mail. If any letters will offer clues as to the spores' origin, inspectors said, they likely will turn up in government mail.

Specifically, inspectors are looking at letters destined for a series of specific ZIP codes, and are searching for any other letters that may have contained anthrax spores or bore handwriting similar to that on anthrax-tainted letters already found.

About 24 truckloads of mail have been sent to Lima, Ohio, for decontamination. Some of it has returned, and has been in Washington more than a week, waiting for postal officials to find an appropriate place to examine the mail.

Postal officials also say there are still about 1 million pieces of mail in the contaminated Brentwood facility. Inspectors are trying to figure out how to package that mail so it can decontaminated and examined.

A similar investigation under way in New Jersey hasn't found "anything showing a smoking gun," Postal Inspection spokesman Dan Milhalko said. New leads are constantly examined and new people questioned, but so far nothing concrete has helped the investigation, he said.

The focus of the investigation remains in the Trenton, New Jersey, area, where letters sent to a U.S. senator and two New York media outlets were postmarked. But there has been no narrowing of the area beyond that, Milhalko said.

New traces of anthrax were found last week in four additional New Jersey post offices, but officials think they are from cross-contamination from the original three Trenton-postmarked letters.
 

NEW JERSEY MAIL TO BE IRRADIATED

TRENTON, New Jersey (CNN) -- November 8, 2001. Ten semitrailer trucks have been loaded with about a million pieces of mail from the U.S. Postal Service's regional processing center in Hamilton Township, and as early as Monday will haul the letters and packages to an off-site facility for irradiation, postal officials said Thursday.

The three anthrax-contaminated letters sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, the New York Post and NBC News were all postmarked in the Hamilton Township facility, which remains closed.

Only the letters and parcels that were in the Hamilton facility on October 18, the day the building was closed because of anthrax contamination, will be sanitized, postal spokesman Al DeSarro said.

He said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the New Jersey Health Department recommended this course of action.

The sterilization facility, about 80 miles south in Bridgeport, New Jersey, is operated by Ion Beam Applications (IBA), based in Oak Brook, Illinois.

"The trucks have been securely containerized and protected according to Department of Defense requirements for the transport of bio-hazardous materials," DeSarro said. "We are working out logistics, and plan to move the trucks early next week."

Earlier, officials had said the transfer would happen this week.

In the radiation process, the mail will be beamed with accelerated electrons, which kill bacteria within seconds. The technology is typically used by food-processing and medical supply companies to sterilize products before they are shipped. No gases or chemicals are used.

The Postal Service said IBA advised that the process could damage items such as electronics, may cause some plastics to become hard or brittle, and could discolor some paper, but magnetic strips on credit cards should not be affected.

Meanwhile, decontamination efforts continue inside the Hamilton Township facility. URS Corp., which is handling the cleanup, moved the mail onto the trucks, sealed the containers, and began sanitizing the building.

"They have started wiping down the machines with a bleach solution, and vacuuming the air ventilation systems," said DeSarro. "It's going to be a complete scouring of the entire facility."

No date has been set for reopening the building.