Kansas City’s postal processing plant will get anthrax-detection equipment later this month, more than three years after mailed anthrax killed five persons on the East Coast. Seven machines, with some components made locally, will test the air for anthrax DNA. If a machine gets a positive reading, it will trigger an alarm that will freeze the mail flow and evacuate 1,600 employees. Kansas City is part of the first $175 million phase of an installation project that eventually will place the equipment in 282 plants across the country. The smaller Kansas City, Kan., processing plant could receive the equipment later this year. The system was made necessary by the 2001 anthrax mail attacks in Washington and elsewhere that killed five persons, including two postal workers. If the detectors had been installed in Washington’s Brentwood postal facility at that time, they would have provided early warning and the postal workers probably would be alive today, said Ormer Rogers Jr., Mid-America District manager for the Postal Service. Full Story
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