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Irradiation may be used on mail
©Washington Post
© St. Petersburg Times, It's already done with chicken, spice, ground beef and baby bottle nipples. The U.S. mail may be next. Amid the growing anthrax scare, the government is exploring whether irradiation or other modern sterilizing technology might be used to cleanse the mail of pathogens. In the weeks since mailed anthrax bacteria have infected people in Florida, New York and Washington, experts have scrambled to figure out how to kill the microbe before it reaches mail handlers or recipients. Irradiation appears to be one of the most viable solutions, experts said. "That is being explored," U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman Sue Brennan said this week, adding that the agency did not want to divulge its strategy. "We are using the latest technology in targeted areas to ensure that the mail is safe." A fairly extensive industry exists that uses irradiation to sanitize food and medical, hygiene and packaging supplies, often in bulk or in assembly line settings. Irradiation has been used in sterilization for decades. "Irradiation is used for food to reduce pathogens and extend shelf life," said Jeffrey Barach, vice president for special projects at the National Food Processors Association. "There is some evidence, and some strong evidence, that irradiating bacterial spores, whether they be food pathogens or anthrax spores, does a really nice job of destroying the spores so that they lose their pathogenicity." Although some scientists say the effects of radiation on food aren't all known, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it's "a safe and effective technology that can prevent many food-borne diseases." Disease-causing germs are reduced or eliminated, the CDC says, and the food doesn't become radioactive. "In the case of mail," Barach said Tuesday, "if there was some powdered bacterial spores in there, it would have the effect of basically killing them or sanitizing them." "With food, you have the concern about taste and quality after the radiation effects," he said. "So, generally, fairly low doses of radiation are used on food products. With mail, of course, nobody tastes mail. You could give it fairly healthy dosages. It doesn't do anything to the mail. It certainly doesn't make the product radioactive or leave any residue. So the mail opener or handler would have no problems in handling the mail after that." The CDC lists three main methods of irradiation: Radiation given off by a radioactive substance such as Cobalt 60, which can penetrate food up to several feet deep and has been used for decades to sterilize medical and dental products. Electron beams, a nonradioactive, highly accelerated stream of electrons sprayed from an electron "gun." They don't penetrate as deeply and are used to sanitize medical and hygienic products such as baby bottle nipples and sanitary napkins. X-ray radiation, a more potent version of the device used in hospitals and dental offices. The latter two technologies could possibly be installed "where mail could be passed along a conveyor belt and the treatment given," Barach said. The first option, which uses a radioactive substance, requires larger, static, concrete-reinforced facilities to which mail might be brought in bulk for treatment. Food Technology Service Inc., of Mulberry in Polk County, has been treating food products since the early 1990s, and its gamma ray "cell" can handle pallets of several thousand pounds, plant manager Jonathan Locke said. The plant sanitizes poultry, ground beef and spices in a seven-hour process that could be reduced to three hours, he said. The United States has only a few food irradiation centers "because it hasn't really caught on that much," Barach said, but scores of facilities use electron beams to sanitize medical equipment. Several are operated by San Diego's Titan Corp. and its subsidiary, SureBeam Corp. The companies' equipment produces "the total elimination of all pathogens" on medical products it sanitizes and partial sterilization on food products where certain bacteria must be retained, spokesman Wil Williams said. The electron beam apparatus, which can be installed on an existing assembly line, can kill pathogens "in a matter of seconds," he said, and could also kill anthrax bacteria and spores.
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