Helping the postal service add "zap" to the mail. (News Briefs).As a member of the Mail Security Task Force of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Congress established the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in 1976 with a broad mandate to advise the President and others within the Executive Office of the President on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs. (OSTP OSTP Office of Science & Technology Policy OSTP Onboard Short Term Plan ), NIST has been working on sanitizing letter mail contaminated or possibly cross-contaminated by the anthrax bioterror actions of last October. However, parcel packages present a different problem. The electron irradiation process that so effectively sanitizes letter mail is not penetrating enough to be used on the nearly 200 000 larger-volume packages that have been sitting in limbo at the Brentwood and Trenton postal facilities. It has been decided that 5 Me V x-ray irradiation is the best tool for decontaminating parcel mail. NIST traceable dosimetry was used in phantom tests and spore-kill tests to provide quality assurance of the correct dose as required by the bacillus anthracis radiation-kill curves generated by the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute The Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) is a triservice laboratory chartered by the U.S. Congress in 1961, conducts research in the field of radiobiology and related matters essential to the operational and medical support of the U.S. (AFRRI AFRRI Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute AFRRI Appalachian Flood Risk Reduction Initiative ). On April 11, NIST and AFRRI researchers briefed White House staff and other federal agencies in the Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The results of NIST-designed experiments were presented, including the survivability of biological spore indicators as a function of absorbed dose, an analysis of volatile organic compound volatile organic compound Environment Any toxic cabon-based (organic) substance that easily become vapors or gases–eg, solvents–paint thinners, lacquer thinner, degreasers, dry cleaning fluids emissions, and decontamination decontamination /de·con·tam·i·na·tion/ (de?kon-tam-i-na´shun) the freeing of a person or object of some contaminating substance, e.g., war gas, radioactive material, etc. de·con·tam·i·na·tion n. efforts using ethylene oxide. As a result, the Postal Service qualified a private company in Bridgeport, NJ, to begin irradiation of its backlog of suspect parcel mail. Anonymous mail with destination ZIP codes 202xx through 205xx (to Government offices) will be irradiated by electron or x-ray beams on an ongoing basis. CONTACT: Larry Hudson, (301) 975-2537; lawrence. hudson@nist.gov. |
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