Neither biological nor chemical agent… Keeping mail safe in the 21st century

Snail mail may be an anachronism, but enough people still use traditional mail to make it a convenient tool for terrorists using bio-weapons that can be lethal in small quantities. And mail is an international affair.

"You can't think of bioterrorism only in the national arena. Bio-weapons in the mail can cross national boundaries very easily," said Ken Ames, project manager for an international mail handling course sponsored by the U.S. State Department and Diplomatic Security Service in association with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

The course, Postal Chemical/Biological Incident Management, is part of the State Department's Anti-Terrorism Assistance program and has three purposes: to spread goodwill by helping foreign countries combat terrorism, to prevent the spread of bioterrorism attacks to the U.S. and to protect U.S. diplomats abroad.

The course is designed for people who might be the first to come into contact with biological or chemical contaminants sent through the mail or the consequences of such attacks. These include postal service workers, the public health community and first responders.

"One of our main goals is to get them thinking about what could happen in advance so they can have a plan for it," said Ames of PNNL. "We start by discussing how to identify a credible threat. In the U.S., we've had thousands of hoaxes for every actual threat so you need some way to weed out the hoaxes without missing the real thing."

Next, the class talks about what steps to take if the threat is credible. How should the suspicious mail be handled? What precautions should be taken if you've touched it? What information can you gather from the piece of mail? Who should you notify? What should you do if other people are in the building?

Other lessons include a history of anthrax incidents in the U.S. and how anthrax spores spread to other countries, appropriate public information before and after the event, basic medical response, such as conducting victim assessment and maintaining sanitation, interagency collaboration and contingency planning.

The four-day training ends with a hands-on exercise that ties together previous discussions. "Students role-play a scenario involving a suspicious piece of mail to get an idea of the follow-up required," Ames said.

More than 50 trainings are scheduled over the next two years in South America, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Europe.