Postal Service sterilizing government mail

By Mike Ahlers
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Postal Service Thursday began trucking some mail bound for federal offices in Washington to an Ohio company to be irradiated to prevent more anthrax-laden letters from reaching government targets.

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The mail will be irradiated using machines ordinarily used to kill bacteria in food and will be returned to Washington for delivery, said Deputy Postmaster General John Nolan.

"At the moment, it's mail destined for those places that would be most likely to have a threat," he said.

A Postal Service spokesman said the effort would soon be extended to Florida, New York and New Jersey -- all of which have had mail contaminated with anthrax.

The radiation technology has "never been used for this type of mail processing before," Nolan said.

"However, it's been used extensively in the food industry and other industries for some time, and scientists, technologists tell us that it is absolutely going to be able to do the job for us, to kill bacteria in and on envelopes. Among those bacteria would be anthrax.

"Most mail is not even remotely a problem," Nolan said. "Magazines, financial statements, bills are produced in very tightly controlled environments and are not really the target pieces that we've seen."