U.S. Postal Service to test several facilities

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Postal Service will conduct environmental testing at numerous facilities in Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey, spokeswoman Deborah Willhite said Wednesday. She listed the following facilities as the ones to be tested:

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Merrifield, Virginia; Dulles, Virginia; Gaithersburg, Maryland; Waldorf, Maryland; the Calvert Annex in Maryland; the Baltimore and Frederick, Maryland, main postal centers; Monmouth, New Jersey; and the processing and distribution centers in the Bronx and Queens, New York.

Willhite gave no reason for the testing.

Willhite also said that by week's end the postal service would try to provide masks and gloves to an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 employees nationwide who handle mail directly.

Willhite's comments came at a news conference with Washington Mayor Anthony Williams about anthrax cases in the nation's capital.

She said the postal service was evaluating special equipment that would irradiate letters and kill any anthrax spores they might contain. That equipment could be in place in five weeks, she said.

For now, Willhite could not promise the mail was entirely safe.

"We are not going to lie to the American people who have sustained us for 227 years," she said. "At this point in time, the mail has a potential risk."