Saturday, December 29, 2001
Testing on the letter is under way this weekend in Columbus.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- A letter containing a white powder, which was found Thursday in the Youngstown State University mailroom, does not appear to be the work of a terrorist, a YSU official said Friday.
The letter looked like it might be a Christmas greeting, and the powder was inside a plastic bag, said Leonard A. Perry, the university's director of environmental and occupational health and safety. Typically, terrorists wouldn't enclose a disease-bearing powder in a plastic bag because they'd want it easily disseminated, he said.
The envelope, which originated in Europe, appeared to have three postmarks, one from Poland, another from Hungary or Yugoslavia and a third he could not decipher, Perry said.
The letter is at the Ohio Department of Health in Columbus, which says it hopes to complete testing this weekend, Perry said late Friday. Perry added that he hopes campus mail delivery, suspended since the letter was discovered Thursday morning, can resume Monday, if tests find nothing harmful.
"We're being cautiously optimistic. We feel that detaining the mail for a few days is the prudent thing to do to give the university community the added measure of safety that it needs," Perry said.
Quarantine: Until test results are received, the entire mail bag that contained the letter with the powder is under quarantine in the university mailroom, along with some mail that was delivered to the bursar's office and computer center and returned to the mailroom as a precaution, he said. All the mail will be delivered or re-delivered promptly if tests come back negative, he said.
The envelope, addressed to a New York City location, did not leak the powder until a YSU mail clerk applied pressure by crossing out the YSU Zip Code with a marking pen, Perry said. He added that a mailroom employee told him the powder-bearing letter may have come here because it got stuck to a letter addressed to YSU.
Perry also said he understands people in some European countries sometimes enclose a powdery starter culture for friendship breads with Christmas greetings.
Disinfected: The area of the mailroom where the letter was handled was cleaned and disinfected, and the powder-bearing envelope was placed in a plastic bag and can for delivery by the Ohio State Highway Patrol to ODH in Columbus, which has confirmed receipt of the envelope, Perry said.
Whether the two mailroom employees who handled the envelope receive precautionary anti-anthrax antibiotics is up to their family doctors, Perry said, adding that doctors typically wait for test results on the envelope before prescribing, especially if results are available in one or two days.