Back to the Viewable page
USPSNewsBreak
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nov. 15, 2001 2 p.m.
Two employees released from hospital, environmental testing going well

Here's some encouraging news: Two workers at the Brentwood Road facility who had been hospitalized for treatment of inhalation anthrax have been released and are recovering. After the earlier release of one employees, the second was released from Inova Hospital in Fairfax, VA, Tuesday. For privacy reasons, the Postal Service has not released the identity of these employees.

The Postal Service continues to make significant progress in our environmental testing initiative, which includes tests at 270 postal facilities around the country. Most are being conducted on a precautionary basis.

The news we're getting is good. We are encouraged that over the past week our environmental testing has found very few instances of contamination. And all of these situations have involved only trace levels of anthrax that do not present a threat to employees or the public.

  • 261 tests have been completed.
  • 205 tests have come back negative.
  • We are awaiting results of 36 tests.
  • A total of 20 tests have come back positive.
  • Of the positives, 18 have been or are being decontaminated and the facilities are open.
The two that remain closed are the processing centers that handled contaminated mail in Trenton, NJ, and the Brentwood Road facility in Washington, DC.

USPS is working with all appropriate authorities, including the Centers for Disease Control, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to develop a plan to eliminate contamination and reopen the buildings. Trenton and Brentwood Road were the most significantly impacted facilities in our system.

USPS has made alternative arrangements for processing mail in these two localities and the closures are having only a very limited impact on local mail delivery.

We are sanitizing potentially contaminated mail from both these facilities using electron-beam technology. We continue to sanitize mail from Brentwood Road at a contract facility in Lima, OH. And yesterday we began to sanitize mail from Trenton at a second contract facility in Bridgeport, NJ.

Once mail from these facilities is sanitized, it must be examined by members of the Inspection Service as part of the ongoing law-enforcement investigation. We hope to begin examining mail from the Brentwood Road facility this week. After it is examined, that mail will be delivered to its intended recipient.

The Stamp Fulfillment Center in Kansas City, MO. reopened for business yesterday. On Oct. 31, environmental testing at the facility found two traces of anthrax in a trash can that contained an envelope from the Brentwood Road facility.

Decontamination at the Stamp Fulfillment Center has been completed. The Center, of course, does not process mail in the Kansas City area and there is no evidence that mail for that area ever came in contact with contamination.

###