Nothing in the press yet, but.........

I work for a large (american owned)cable company in the UK.
today an envelope was received in our post-room which contained some white powder. The police were promptly called and when they arrived they told our secretary and security guard(both of whom had some of the powder on them) to go straight to hospital. When they reached the A&E they were told to leave in case they were contagious. The police took the powder away and said they will have it analyzed.
We're now awaiting the results of wat the powder is. It was more than likely a hoax, but the what if? scenario comes to mind.
I only found out because I'm friendly with our guard. No Environmental Health guys appeared, no inspection of the building was done. It looks like our management has swept it under the carpet .
I've sent a mail along with some details to the main newspaper here in Scotland. I hope this gets investigated. It's being treated as if it never existed.
If I hear anything, I'll keep you posted.

regards
FLC

I found this about a similar occurrence at a Scottish bank. Not sure if its related...

thanks for that, William.

I never read the Sunday Mail yesterday. Looks like it's going to be a series of hoaxes(I hope). let's see where this happens next.......

A few months after all of the "other anthrax scares" here in the US. I was in a co-workers office and just happend to lean and put my hand on top of one of his filing cabinets... there was a paper, so I said hey did you know this was here ? He said yeah, stands up and says... look at this, next to the paper was a pile of "white powder" about 2 inches high.

We just looked at each other at first and then didn't really think much of it, until after lunch, I went to him and said that it does bother me and I think that we should tell someone. We told the boss and he instructed us to close the office door and wait in his office.

The police and fire dept showed up. Then there were some guys in suits. None of them went into that office. Finally two guys in "full protective suits" went in and got the powder.

The fire dept told us not to worry, and if we started feeling ill over the weekend to go to the emergency room.

later the next week, we were told that it would cost $10k to have the powder tested, and that the "officials" thinks it was a hoax not to worry about it.

I thought that was crappy since, we still have no clue what it was or where it came from.

I'm still alive though, so that's a good thing.

As someone who works in a corporate print-to-mail facility here in the US, this subject has been something I've had to deal with at work. We constantly get supplies from the Post Office, in the form of trays and carts to load mail that we produce into. Considering all the white dust generated by the paper trim from the inserting machines, we were concerned that we could wind up as victims of an attack and never know it until well after the fact.

After that, they added a sealed room to open all incoming mail (I pity the poor bastard who has to do the job though) and a vacuum system to keep the paper dust to a minimum, but corporate security in this regard is still very lax. Any company that receives supplies from the USPS, as we do, is very much at risk if another round of attacks happens. Luckily, most of them appear to have been hoaxes, but if they hadn't been, it could have been horrific in scale if you thik about it.

Originally posted by elevatedone

I'm still alive though, so that's a good thing.

true words, my friend.

one thing that pi$$es me off about bureaucracy is that they think they can justify not spending money.
$10000 or peace of mind. I know which I'd choose