Building an Anti-Anthrax Envelope
Nov. 9 -- It's next to impossible to detect which of the tens of millions of letters that flow through the United States Postal Service system contains anthrax and which contains merely letters. But some companies are proposing an interesting approach to safeguarding the mail: radically redesigned envelopes.
Mail-Well Inc., a commercial printer and envelope maker in Englewood, Colo., has eyes on new envelope designs — one of which may hopefully be able to detect and kill anthrax spores some day.
For now, the company offers rather simple redesigned products for its corporate customers. Its Safety Window Envelope, for example, looks just like an ordinary business-sized envelope but with an extra "window" along the bottom edge.
The idea is that any suspicious powder within a mailed envelope would settle along the bottom of the mailer. The plastic window — about the width of a finger — would then allow any mail handler to see the residue inside without opening the envelope.
Anthrax-Immune Envelopes?
But according to Bob Hart, president of Mail-Well's envelope division, the company is also exploring a hypothetical solution: an envelope that would detect — and possible kill — hidden microbes.
Hart says the company is talking with researchers and paper suppliers to develop such a mailer. The ideal solution, he says, would be to develop a paper coated with a chemical tuned to detect anthrax spores. Envelopes crafted from such a paper would then theoretically change colors in the presence of the harmful bacteria.
If such a concept could work, then it would be no stretch to also coat the paper with anti-bacterial solutions that would neutralize the anthrax spores altogether. "It would be an easy solution for us," says Hart. "But can it be done?"
Still a Long Shot
At the moment, it seems unlikely.
"I'm not sure they can do it," say Arthur Aronson, a professor of biological sciences at Purdue University. Since a hard protein shell protects inactive anthrax spores, "They are very resistant," he says. "The would have to coat [the paper] with something that would stimulate growth and then kill it [with antibodies] once it became active."
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