WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 (UPI) -- A U.S. postal facility serving Capitol Hill was closed Tuesday because it might have processed a letter that contained the deadly poison ricin, which was found in a Senate office building, sources said.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a watchdog group in Washington, said a postal worker who worked in the V Street mail processing center informed him the facility had been closed Monday night after the discovery of a suspicious white powder near a mail opening machine in the Dirksen Senate office building.
The powder later tested positive for the toxin ricin, which can kill a person in as little as 36 hours. There are no known antidotes.
U.S. Postal Service spokesman Bob Anderson confirmed the postal worker's account and said, "It was shut down around midnight" and all the employees were evacuated.
Authorities have not determined where the ricin came from but because of its location near a mail machine they presumed it was contained in a letter.
Anderson said the V Street facility, which is the only postal unit that processes Capitol Hill mail, was closed "just out of precaution" and he was not aware of any reports of illness or symptoms among any postal workers.
As many as 16 Senate staff members may have been exposed to the ricin, which was found near the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. Some staffers apparently underwent decontamination procedures but no one has developed any symptoms.
Anderson said he did not know whether any postal workers had been tested or had undergone decontamination procedures.
Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit last year against the U.S. Postmaster General on behalf of postal service employees pertaining to the anthrax-tainted letters discovered in 2001. Fitton questioned the adequacy of the Postal Service's response. The lawsuit alleged Postmaster General John E. Potter and senior postal officials kept the Brentwood facility open for four days, even though they knew an anthrax letter addressed to then Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., had passed through the facility.
Other mail facilities upstream from the V Street facility that might have handled a potential ricin-laden letter should have been shut down and tested for ricin contamination, Fitton said. All workers at the V street facility should have been tested and decontaminated as was done on Capitol Hill, he added.
"They just don't seem to have the same level of concern about postal workers as they do for Senate employees," Fitton said. "How many times does this have to happen before they get their act together?"
He referred to a vial of ricin found in a package in a Greenville, S.C., postal facility last year and the anthrax letters that arrived at facilities in Florida, Connecticut, New Jersey and in Washington, D.C., in 2001.
Fitton said two Brentwood employees died from anthrax and two others became ill in 2001 in part because postal officials failed to immediately evacuate the facility and offer employees preventive antibiotics, as was done for exposed workers on Capitol Hill.
The V Street facility remained closed as the postal service waited to hear from the Capitol Police whether it was safe to reopen the processing center.
Another suspicious letter was found Monday night at a Wallingford, Conn., postal facility. The letter was intended for the Republican National Committee. As of Tuesday, it remained unclear whether the letter was contaminated with ricin or whether it was related to the Capitol Hill incident.
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Steve Mitchell is UPI's Medical Correspondent. E-mail [email protected]
