(idea) by ssd Fri Nov 02 2001 at 6:41:36
Everyone's talking about how bad anthrax is, and how it kills, but nobody is talking much about how to kill it.

The reality is, anthrax has been around for many years, and it has been a hazard to anyone who works with sheep or goat hair, so methods have been found to kill it. (update) Recent events have brought this to popular light, and additional methods have been researched and brought into production in the following year, so I've updated this writeup to include them.

Here's a short list of several common methods:

  • 0.1% bleach solution 1
  • daylight (UV exposure kills most biological agents), although extended exposure may be necessary with anthrax
  • chemicals like formaldehyde used in treating animal skins and hair
  • chemicals normally used in treatment of potable water (so it is not going to be useful to contaminate the water supply)
  • gamma ray irradiation, which is used in food preservation, and is being considered for mail (at least one town is already doing this), although 10x the dose to kill salmonella will be needed.
  • Exposure to ozone has been shown to be at least partially effective in killing antrax.
  • chlorine dioxide was used by the US gov to clean up several of the contaminated buildings.
  • Methyl bromide fumigation has been experimentally shown to be a cheap and effective method for killing antrax.3 Ironically, Methyl bromide appears to have been discontinued due to proported reactions with ozone.
  • Commercial devices have been developed that use one or more of the methods above to kill anthrax in mail and air conditioning systems.

    What does NOT kill anthrax, but has been rumored to do so:

  • Heat from a steam iron is NOT hot enough; anthrax can survive2 temperatures up to 318°F. Anthrax was originally picked as a biological weapon partly because it could survive distribution by bombs.
  • Similarly, a microwave oven will not impart enough energy into the antrax to kill it (at least, not without catching your mail on fire).

As noted above, Gruinard Island was recently "decontaminated". They sprayed a dilute solution of formaldehyde and salt water. I'm sure this got what was on the surface, but archiologists claim to have found live 100 year old anthrax spores burried, so who's to say the decontamination was totally effective... I guess you don't want to go digging there.

 

1 U.S. Army field guide
2 Thanks, snopes!
3 http://extlab7.entnem.ufl.edu/PestAlert/anthrax.htm

I like it!