Posted by Brian in Oregon on Friday, October 12, 2001 at 7:28PM :
Many mailrooms have been shut down while folks scratch their heads to come up with a plan. I'm on a safety committee, and came up with this plan, which we are implementing until a better plan comes along. I'm sharing it in case some of you have businesses that get enough mail to have worries about this.
We're seperating mail into two groups at work.
The bulk of it will be mail that we know where it came from, or at least who sent it.
The questionable mail will go into a plastic bag, to be opened later. Questionable mail is mail addressed to people who no longer work for the company, no return addresses, postmarks that do not match the return address, anything that does not "look" right.
That mail will be opened by a person wearing a NIOSH approved mask made by Arrow ($16.95) using a P-100 HEPA R-57B cartridge (a two pack is $7.15, and the mask takes two cartridges). Latex surgical gloves will be worn. Filtered eye goggles will be worn. If mail is found with a substance in it, it will go back into the plastic bag and authorities will be called. (Any mail that looks really suspect will have the authorities called anyway.) The mail should be opened in an area that gets little traffic, something which won't shut down your whole operation if there is contamination. Be sure your filter mask is NIOSH approved. Most industrial supply or safety supply houses carry them.
The P-100 HEPA R-57B cartridge will filter down to the 1 micron level. The P-100 means that 100% of 1 micron sized particles will be blocked. Be sure and specify that as the next cartridge up only gets 95%. The mask cannot be worn effectively by someone with a beard. Only a total head hood works for bearded people.
We are not going to use the mask for all of the mail. Just "questionable" mail. But there's no reason other than comfort why all mail could not be handled this way.
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