More on irradiated mail

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

I discussed this question with my husband and he told me that when he was in college, he sorted mail at the local P. O. at night.  Then, of course, it was all sorted by hand.  He pointed out that the surfaces of the envelopes and folded fliers peel and crumble slightly, that the sorting room was always dusty, and that his hands got itchy and he washed them frequently.


An electron beam intense enough to char paper and distort the windows in window envelopes is probably intense enough to enhance the peeling and crumbling process, no matter what the chemical process by which the paper was made.  I imagine that a lot of the sorting is now done by machine, and mail is handled much less by people.  So I would guess that 

(1) there is much less human handling of mail than there was 50 years ago

(2) the surface of unirradiated mail peels and crumbles as much as it ever did, only handlers don't notice it because they don't handle it that much

(3) Intense electron beam irradiation results in more surface crumbling, and the handlers hands are sensitized and irritated to the extent that it is noticeable, even though they handle the mail less.


They should have used gammas.




Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com