A Lebanon firm that specializes in irradiating industrial products has been approached by the Postal Service to help solve its problem with anthrax-tainted mail.

Employees of E-Beam Services Inc. in Lebanon unload cartons Friday. (Gary Landers photo) | ZOOM |

        And while the president of E-Beam Services Inc. thinks zapping mail with electron beams would destroy anthrax spores, he's not sure his company is the right one for the project.

        “We're a bit of a conservative company,” said Paul Minbiole, E-Beam's president. “We'd want to get everything set up right. What do we know about handling mail?”

        Lima, Ohio, Mayor David Berger said Friday that two truckloads of mail from Washington, D.C. were brought to a private compa ny that does medical product sterilization in that northwest Ohio city to be decontaminated.

        Police blocked entrances Friday to Titan Scan Technologies, allowing only employees through. Authorities wouldn't say what time the mail had arrived, or whether more was expected.

        Postal officials in Washington had said Thursday that mail from the Capitol and the White House were being taken to an undisclosed location in Ohio for irradiation.

        In addition, officials of Mentor, Ohio-based Steris Corp., which provides sterilization and decontamination products and services, were reportedly talking with federal officials about how they might help fight the anthrax threat.

        E-Beam uses controlled, high-energy electron beams in a machine called an accel erator to squash bacteria in new surgical equipment. The process is also used to strengthen polyethylene coated wire and plastic plumbing pipe.

        E-Beam employs about 20 at its $10 million Lebanon plant, which opened in 1999. It also has electron-beam irradiation plants in Lafayette, Ind., Cranbury, N.J., and Plainview, N.Y.

        Mr. Minbiole said no mail has been sent to E-Beam plants for irradiation, but within the last two weeks postal authorities approached the company about using one of its facilities exclusively to decontaminate mail.

        “This is not particularly consistent with what we normally do,” he said. “That's part of the reason at this plant, at this point, we don't see as a fit.”

        Mr. Minbiole said E-Beam is concerned about how it would protect employees and equipment from contamination.

        “Everything we do for our customers is a very controlled, repeatable process that we really know, and work out with our customers. This is different. If the concern is anthrax, you have to know how to handle that.”

        The economics of irradiation are attractive, Mr. Minbiole said. He estimated the cost would be a penny or two per envelope when done in large volumes.

        At the Lebanon plant, products are fed by conveyors into a “beam room” that exposes the items to a shower of electrons. E-Beam's accelerator and related shielding covers about 3,000 square feet and can handle between 10,000 and 15,000 pounds of products an hour.

        “We do processing for Fortune 500 companies,” Mr. Minbiole said. “In four to 10 hours we can do their whole week's production.”

        He said he believes the Postal Service is looking to install smaller accelerators in its mail processing facilities.

        E-Beam was created about 16 years ago when it was spun off to a group of private investors by Monsanto Corp., which then had a business making the irradiation equipment and doing the processing for other companies.

        The Associated Press contributed.

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