Re: irradiation units...
Some mail destined for Washington DC addresses has
been trucked to Lima, Ohio to be e-beam treated. The
postal service has also ordered 8 e-beam systems to be
installed in high risk areas like Washington DC.
E-beam sterilization will certainly damage some seeds
particularly small seeds with thin seed coats such as
tomato seeds.
I have to retract my earlier statement about pumpkin
seeds being thick enough to survive. The heavy
exposure levels and high energy levels that they are
talking about now would most likely damage even large
seeds like pumpkin seeds. It will also damage
unprocessed film and some electronics.
There are a host of problems applying this technology
carte blanc on mail. So many in fact, that I believe
that it is impractical for common use.
The postal service is struggling for viable options to
contend with the anthrax scare and so is rushing into
this idea at least for high risk mail. See this link
for a good article on the current status of e-beam
sterilization of mail:
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/epaper/editions/thursday/news_b30e9f8bf00430cb004e.html
Again I doubt that this technology will be adopted for
wide spread use on the mail, but it certainly is an
issue to watch. For now, you only need to worry if
you are mailing seeds to the DC area.
You may want to mail a package of seeds to your
Congressperson with a little note: "What's up with
this?"
vince
--- Roger Swalley <res@colfax.com> wrote:
> They are using units on Gov mail right now. As I
> understand they were set up on a temp basis some
> where in the midwest????????
> Roger
>
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