The Amerithrax casing of 2001 , in which letters harbour Anthrax spores were deliver to media outlets and a yoke of US Senators ’ berth , killed five the great unwashed and nauseate another 17 . In the wake of these attacks , the US Postal Service ( USPS ) installed a system of electronic noses in ring armor processing facility around the country design to whiff out the deadly bacterium before someone else does .
Much like the IRS , the USPS is not constrain by the Fourth Amendment when it comes to the screening of mail . According to Postal Code § 233.11 Mail reasonably suspected of being severe to persons or property :
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When the Chief Postal Inspector determine that there is a credible terror that sure mail may contain a dud , explosive , or other fabric that would endanger life or prop , including firearm which are not mailable under Section C024 of the Domestic Mail Manual , the Chief Postal Inspector may , without a lookup warrant or the transmitter ’s or addressee ’s consent , authorize the screening of such mail by any means equal to of identifying explosives , nonmailable firearms , or other dangerous table of contents in the mail .
Development of the Biological Detection System begin in 2002 when the USPS draft the basic functions such a system would require , free-base on the agency ’s consultations with Joint Projects Office ( JPO ) and the SBCCOM ( US Army Soldier Biological Chemical Command ) . No exist system was capable of what the USPS take , so the postal service determine about developing one that did . Or at least Northrop Grumman did , in coordination Smiths Detection . Northrop accommodate aspects of more than 20 arrangement already in use by the US military for biological warfare tests to the specific needs of the USPS . The US Army Research Institute of Infectious Disease ( USARIID ) Navy Medical Research Center , NIST , Dept of Agriculture , and John Hopkins University all helped vet the arrangement ’s performance before its initial trial take to the woods in a Baltimore - area mail processing shopping center in late 2002 .
As ring mail travels through the Advanced Facer Caneler System , it travels under a small hood that draws in ambient air , transmitting it to an aerosol collector in the BDS storage locker . This collector concentrates the suspect particles in a sterile water system answer and then automatically transfers it , along with a reagent to the PCR ( polymerase mountain range chemical reaction ) building block . The PCR duplicates the biologic sample distribution ’s deoxyribonucleic acid and compares the result against a known episode of Anthrax . If the test come back positive , the situation controller is notified and the offending ring armor can be recovered for further inspection All this carry less than an hour and is performed on - situation .
Since entering overhaul in 2003 , more than a thousand BSD units have been put in in mail shopping center around the country .
As of 2009 , the BSDs had screened screen tens of zillion of packages and completed a total of eight million tests — all without a delusive positive degree . That ’s an impressive pattern , even if Anthrax is no longerthe most stylish pathogen .
[ GPO – NALC1,2,3 – Corporate IR – Globe Newswire – Images : Associated Press , NALC ]
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