Posted on 07/15/2003 12:59:19 PM PDT by Princeton
Postal Worker Finds Suspicious Powder In Letters
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A postal worker found white powder in about 20 letters addressed to politicians around the country early Tuesday, leading firefighters to seal off part of the city's main post office.
The Tallahassee Fire Department said the powder was being tested by the Leon County Health Department to see if the powder was anthrax or another hazardous material was placed in the letters, which were addressed to members of Congress. Test results weren't expected for two or three days, officials said.
Postal workers immediately secured the area after discovering the powder and called 911, officials said. A hazardous materials team decontaminated the area and no postal workers are thought to have been contaminated, they said.
On Oct. 15, 2001, just a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, an anthrax-bearing letter was opened in the office of then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. Traces of the toxin were found in other areas of the Capitol, apparently the result of the exposure of other letters in the mail system, and thousands of workers were treated with antibiotics as a precaution. The one million-square-foot Hart Senate Office Building where Daschle's office was located was declared safe three months later after it was decontaminated with chlorine dioxide, a toxic gas. Five people around the country, including a photo editor at a Boca Raton-based supermarket tabloid, died from the attacks, but no Capitol Hill employees were harmed. Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The system begins a trial run at the Kilmer mail processing center in Edison. The system will collect samples of air automatically as letters move through mail canceling equipment. A DNA test will then show whether anthrax is present in the samples. The results will be immediate -- allowing facilities to quickly respond if anthrax shows up.
Testing is taking place at 14 other mail processing centers across the nation, ranging from Los Angeles to Cleveland to Baltimore -- where it was first tried out for several months.
The postal service says it wanted different locales -- to cover various climates and environments.
The postal service developed the system after the anthrax-by-mail attacks two years ago that left five people dead.
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