Anthrax closes 2nd D.C. postal facility

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A second postal facility here was shut down Friday after traces of anthrax were found in the building.

A carrier case at the Southwest Post Office, on L Street, tested positive for the presence of anthrax spores, said U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman Deborah Willhite.

"It has been closed down immediately," Willhite said. Officials expected that people who worked at the facility are expected to be safe from infection.

"The good news is, like all postal workers they had been put on Cipro earlier in the week," she said."We do not expect that there will be any fallout from this."

Officials have tested 36 postal facilities in the area. Twenty-one of those tests have proved negative for the presence of anthrax.

Postal officials also have ordered environmental testing of 30 mail processing and distribution centers, and plan to extend the testing to approximately 200 other facilities in the future.

Funerals for two

The Brentwood facility, in northeast Washington, remained closed after an anthrax-laced letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle passed through the facility.

Two Brentwood employees have died of inhalation anthrax, and a funeral was held Friday for one of those workers. Thomas Morris Jr., 55, of Suitland, Maryland, was a distribution clerk who had worked for the postal service for 28 years. He died Sunday.

The funeral for Joseph Curseen Jr., 47, of Clinton, Maryland, will be Saturday. Curseen was a mail processor who had 15 years of service. He died Monday.

A public memorial for the postal workers is expected to be held next week, Willhite said.

Three other Washington-area people with inhalation anthrax remain hospitalized in northern Virginia hospitals .Two of those were postal workers, and the other worked at State Department mail facility near Sterling, Virginia.

Decontaminating mail

A San Diego, California, company, meanwhile, said the Postal Service awarded it a contract worth approximately $40 million to provide eight electron beam systems to decontaminate U.S. mail against the threat of anthrax.

The Titan Corp. said it will subcontract with its subsidiary SureBeam to provide the electron beam systems, which irradiate the mail to destroy anthrax bacteria and other disease-causing organisms. The technology has been used in the past to sterilize medical products and to eliminate dangerous bacteria in food.

The contract is for the purchase of eight systems with an option for an additional 12 systems, the Titan Corp. said. In addition, Titan will operate and maintain the systems for the Postal Service.

Titan expects the first systems to be received by the Postal Service in the Washington area in November.