At 9:55 AM -0800 1/29/02, Winsor Crosby wrote:
I do wonder how you exempt anything and get the anthrax. If film
envelopes are contaminated from other mail, will they not
recontaminate sterilized mail? Wouldn't a terrorist mail a
contaminant in a film package? I suppose that since processing labs
would be the only places getting mail that was not irradiated, they
are the canaries in the mine for further measures?
For pretty much any sterilization method you can figure out there are
ways to circumvent it. One of the impressions I'm under is that the
main push is to figure out ways to zap anonymous mail -- mail sent
from trusted high-volume sources or delivered over the counter at
post offices etc is considered less likely to be a source of contamination.
Of course when you consider that the anthrax used may have been diverted
from the US military this trusted-senders thing gets a little less
solid, but so far playing the odds is pretty much all they can do.
(An acquaintance who works for USPS says that packages getting shredded
by the sorting machinery and depositing their contents all over same is
not a rare occurrence -- I'm just glad none of my film has been in one
of those packages.)
--
Paul Wallich pw@xxxxxxxxx
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