stupid anthrax q: would microwaving your snail mail help?

[Igor Chudov]

My guess would be that microwaving them will not help. Microwaves heat
up moist things by starting electric currents in them. Anthrax spores
are not moist and probably will not even heat up.

Try your regular stove. Set it to, say, 400 degrees and pray that the papers
will remain legible. I'd prbobably be more likely to be attacked by meteorites
or abducted by aliens than be anthraxed via mail, but *if* I had to sterilize mail,
I would use a stove.

igor

Probablysunder wrote:
> 
> 
> This is a stupid question but as I'm not a biologist, I'll ask it anyway and risk
> looking foolish...
> 
> Would it help to microwave your mail if you don't know where it came from and you're sure it doesn't contain an objects?  i.e. it's
> not a CD you've ordered from Amazon. :)
> 
> Do anthrax spores get cooked enough by microwaves to be killed, or are they too dry in spore form to be nuked?
> 
> Of course, if we start mass nuking our mail, the terrorists might mail us something that would explode when nuked... still, for now
> it's a question to ask.
> 
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	- Igor.