By DON McINTOSH, Associate Editor

Six years after letters containing anthrax killed two Washington, D.C., postal workers, several complaints filed by union workers in Portland suggest caution may be waning at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).

In December, to deal with a heightened volume of letters, Portland’s central post office processed some letters without using machines that were installed to detect anthrax.

That spurred members of Portland-based American Postal Workers Union Local 128 to file a union contract grievance, a complaint with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and a report to the USPS postal inspectors.

The anthrax scare started a week after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when letters containing anthrax spores were sent to at least five major news organizations; three weeks later, letters containing a more refined version of anthrax were sent to two U.S. senators. At least 22 people developed anthrax infections, and five of those died, including two APWU members at the Brentwood postal facility in Washington, D.C. Anthrax is a not-uncommon livestock disease, but particular strains of the bacteria that cause it have been developed for use as biological weapons.

In the wake of the attacks, Congress appropriated $1.4 billion to protect the mail by buying and installing “biohazard detection systems” in USPS facilities. By late last year, the systems, manufactured and maintained by Northrop Grumman, had been installed at all 283 major USPS processing facilities.

The systems are set up to catch anthrax in stamped letters collected from postal boxes or home mailboxes — not commercial mass mailings, which are the bulk of USPS workload. Anthrax-sniffing machines are integrated into USPS’ high speed letter-cancelling equipment. A vacuum takes an air sample from a batch of letters, which is then tested by DNA analysis to look for anthrax. It takes 30 to 45 minutes to get the test result. If any of the machines ever detect anthrax, an alarm is supposed to go off, and postal workers have been trained to follow procedures to contain the batch and evacuate the building.

That’s where mail processing clerk Roseanna Foster-Mikhail comes in. Foster-Mikhail, a 22-year postal employee, is Local 128’s safety and health representative, and the person responsible for biohazard training for local postal employees. Her union’s members maintain the machine, though another union, the Laborers-affiliated National Postal Mail Handlers Union, represents workers who use the machine.

The Portland post office has eight of the high-tech cancellation machines, each capable of scanning and stamping the cancellation mark on 30,000 pieces of mail per hour. But even that’s not enough around holidays like Christmas, when letter volumes soar — from 1.5 million pieces a night to as much as 3 million pieces, according to L.C. Hansen, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 82.

In an Oct. 4, 2007 letter, USPS’ national processing operations manager David E. Williams authorized local managers, during peak times, to cancel stamps using other machines that aren’t connected to the biohazard detection equipment. APWU president William Burrus protested the move in a Dec. 5 letter to the postmaster general.

“This change poses great dangers to employees and the American public,” Burrus wrote. “It is not possible to predict that future terrorist efforts will be coordinated to coincide with the limitations of the policy.”

The next day, Williams wrote back to local managers seemingly reversing the previous letter.

But the end-run happened anyway, in Portland at least, local USPS employees say.

“This is a life and death issue,” says Local 128 Vice President Brian Dunsmore.

Dunsmore estimates that somewhere between 300,0000 to a million letters may have gone through the Portland facility in December without being tested for anthrax.

The day after Christmas, Local 128 members filed an OSHA complaint about it. OSHA doesn’t have any rules requiring workplace precautions against anthrax, but the federal agency is investigating.

At the same time, Local 128 filed a grievance, charging that not using the anthrax-detection machines violates a safety clause in the union contract. The grievance is now at Step 2 of the process, and it could take a year before it’s resolved by negotiation or arbitration.

A late-December call to USPS postal inspectors brought a speedier response. Inspectors visited the Portland facility Jan. 14 and wrote a report. But so far USPS has refused to release it to the union.

“This is a priority for us,” said Dunsmore, the Local 128 vice president. “We’re pretty sure it’s a problem throughout the nation.”

Adding to postal employees’ frustration, authorities have yet to find out who is responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks. And the FBI hasn’t updated members of Congress about the criminal investigation since 2003, despite repeated requests.

There have been no anthrax attacks since 2001. But Foster-Mikhail wants assurance that her members are as safe as possible. Will the biohazard detection system work in the event of another anthrax letter attack? It’s hard to know, since there’s no practical or safe way to test the machines using letters that contain anthrax. But Foster-Mikhail says the machines certainly won’t work if they’re not used.

Last month at a Northwest Oregon Labor Council-sponsored breakfast with Congressman David Wu, Foster-Mikhail asked for congressional help.

“Washington, D.C. has this in operation all the time to protect you,” she said. “But we don’t in this room.”