U.S. emergency responders have dealt with more than 30,000 false alarms involving strange powders and other substances since the 2001 anthrax mailings that killed five people, USA Today reported Sunday (see GSN, June 6).
None of the incidents in that time have involved anthrax or a similarly lethal agent, the newspaper said (see GSN, Oct. 1).
During a 20-month period beginning in January 2007, the FBI investigated more than 900 potential biological-weapon cases, "the majority of those being white powder letters," said spokesman Richard Kolko.
"This is no joke and making these threats by mailing even harmless white powder can result in serious jail time for the offender," he said, noting that "several dozen people" have been found guilty of violating federal hoax and domestic terrorism regulations.
Billy Hayes, a Washington fire official, added: "A single incident can warrant a huge response. ... It gets very expensive, not to mention the inconvenience."
A significant portion of the 2,893 incidents that the U.S. Postal Inspection Service has responded to in the last year have involved white powder, but no official tally of powder scares since 2001 is available, according to spokesman Douglas Bem (Mimi Hall, USA Today, Oct. 12).