stupid anthrax q: would microwaving your snail mail help?

[Morten Liebach]

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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