FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 23, 2001

City Response to Suspicious Letter at Architectural Firm

            From October 12 until this afternoon, the City has responded to 130 calls about suspicious letters or packages. This compares to 17 calls during the entire month prior.

            Since October 16, City hazardous materials crews have used the state-of-the-art Bio Threat Alert (BT A) system. BTA is a field test that can quickly confirm the absence of anthrax. It has a 95 percent confidence level in confirming the presence of anthrax.

            This means that the field test may also indicate a false positive 5 percent of the time. Twelve of these BTA tests haves been run to date, including the ones on a package addressed to a local architectural firm today.