Machines help reduce powder scares

Nothing mobilizes employees at the U.S. Postal Service more than two words: “White powder.”

Following the four anthrax-laced letters sent in October 2001 that killed two Washington, D.C.-area postal workers, the Postal Service has spent $1.2 billion to research, develop and install machines called a “Biohazard Detection System” to help avoid similar problems in the future.

Postal officials on Thursday unveiled the four BDS machines that will be installed by July 1 at the Spokane Processing and Distribution Center, which daily sorts more than 3.5 million pieces of mail for Eastern Washington and North Idaho.

“The Postal Service never envisioned that we would need to become experts in biohazard detection systems,” senior plant manager Mike Holloway said. “We take the protection of our employees and the communities we serve very seriously.”

The machines have been installed in 152 distribution centers, including Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia. The Spokane and Everett facilities are getting outfitted now, and Pasco will get the BDS machines later this summer.

By sometime this fall, a total of 287 postal distribution centers nationwide will have received the machines, said Postal Service spokeswoman Teresa Rudkin.

The BDS machines continually test air particles as the mail passes through on a conveyer belt. Test samples are processed every hour. If anthrax is detected, the entire plant shuts down within 90 minutes of the mail coming through the machine, Holloway said.

Since no mail is processed in that time frame, any positive test would ensure that the anthrax – a naturally occurring bacterium that can be processed into a bio-weapon – would remain contained in the Spokane facility, Holloway said.

“Clearly when this happened in 2001, it was a shock to the country,” he said. “It was a shock to the Postal Service.”

Defense contractors helped develop the machines using a variety of technologies, said Mike Griffin, the BDS coordinator at the Spokane facility.

“These machines have been in place for over two years on the East Coast. We have never had a false positive. And we’ve never had a false negative,” Griffin said. “When they put anthrax through the machine to test it, it always goes off. It’s a very reliable system.”

But the machines have not stopped the time-consuming delays caused by what postal officials call “white powder incidents,” Holloway said.

“You would be amazed at the kinds of white powder substances people put in the mail, be it baking powder sent to a grandchild, laundry detergent samples, you name it,” he said. “If it’s white and it’s powdery people tend to at least try to put it in their envelope in one way or the other.”

Since the four anthrax letters were sent, the Postal Service has had more than 20,000 white powder scares, Rudkin said. And that number is almost a year old.

“Clearly, everyone’s awareness was raised to a level we haven’t seen before. So those incidents happen and continue to happen,” Holloway said. “This is not a game. It’s not fun. It’s very serious.

“It would be a great help to the Postal Service if people would refrain from putting white powdery substances of any kind in the mail.”