Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Thousands of pieces of mail sanitized by radiation are being trucked back to Washington, D.C., where investigators will check them one by one in a search for anthrax clues.
Since a letter containing anthrax was found in the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle on Oct. 15, tons of mail in the Capitol and federal offices have been impounded.
The mail was trucked to Lima, Ohio, where it was sanitized to prevent the spread of disease in case it had been contaminated by the Daschle letter — or in case there were other contaminated letters.
Two postal workers in Washington’s Brentwood facility where the Daschle letter was processed have died of anthrax, others have been sickened, and several mailrooms around the city have been found contaminated with anthrax spores.
"In my view, all mail should be irradiated from here on out," Daschle said Wednesday. "The quicker we can acquire equipment to do that, the better."
The post office is purchasing machines that use electron beams to sanitize the mail, with the first expected to arrive in Washington sometime this month.
The machines are to be used, at least initially, for mail addressed to government agencies. Routine mail to individuals, such as bills, magazines and catalogs, is thought less likely to carry contamination.
The first truckload of the mail sent to Ohio returned to Washington on Tuesday, according to James Jarboe, FBI counterterrorism chief.
"We have the mail, we will go through it piece by piece to see if there is additional contamination," he said.
Postal Inspector Dan Mihalko said inspectors are looking for additional mail that may have contained anthrax.
That anthrax would have been neutralized by the electron sterilization, he said, but any such letters would still provide valuable evidence.
"That is a long process," he said. "They have go through it by hand."
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