stupid anthrax q: would microwaving your snail mail help?

[Igor Chudov]

One thing I would like to buy is a pressure cooker.

Another is a kind of charger that charges water with CO2, to make homemade
fizzy water insteado f buying it at stores. In Russia these things were called
syphons. Any ideas?

igor

Morten Liebach wrote:
> 
> 
> On 16, Oct, 2001 at 09:22:19AM -0500, Igor Chudov wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Right.
> 
> > 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.
> 
> In labs an autoclave is used to sterilize everything.
> 
> Autoclaves are basically pressure cookers, high pressure steam at 121
> deg. Celsius and ~2 Bar kill everything.
> 
> The effectivity of autoclaves is tested with spores from Bacillus
> stearothermophilus, which is some of the most resistant there is, and I
> suspect B. anthracium is quite heat resistant too, as most other Bacillus
> species.
> 
> But I'd use a pressure cooker to kill the spores if I had the need (and
> didn't have an autoclave, that is).
> The paper probably wouldn't fall apart, though the ink might not be
> readable after having been wet.
> 
> 
> These things I know from having worked as a lab technician in a
> microbiological lab once.
> 
> Have a nice day
> 
> 	Morten
> 
> -- 
> Morten Liebach <morten at hotpost.dk>
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	- Igor.