PUBLISHED ARTICLES

The following article was published in the December/January issue of the IFMA Capital Chapter "Capital News" publication and on the IFMA Capital Chapter website:

Handling Mail Handling... Robert O. Williams, P.E.

What would happen if your company's offices, or the entire building, were suddenly closed for a week? Two weeks? What about three weeks? It can, and has, happened. Could your company survive? Most companies do not have a contingency plan in place for this type of occurrence. Why? Because, until recently, the chance that your office space or even your building could become uninhabitable overnight was typically limited to a catastrophic fire or act of severe weather. Both of these events are extremely rare.

Times have changed. Now more than ever before, we are more aware of our facilities security systems (and their limitations), the people we employ, and the people who visit our buildings. We are even suspicious of our incoming mail, and for good reason. The detection of anthrax contamination from incoming mail in several of the nation's postal facilities, government office buildings, and even some private office buildings has emphasized the need for the Facility Manager to investigate and evaluate all procedures and practices employed in supporting today's modern office facilities.

The majority of companies today are not addressing methods of protecting their employees and limiting the damage to their business resulting from a potential biological contamination event. Part of the problem is not knowing the potential impact on the facility should the unthinkable happen. Many types of bacteria can become airborne and can move through a building riding on the air currents in the building. As a result, the very system that provides comfort as well as healthy indoor air quality, the heating ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) system, can actually distribute the bacteria efficiently throughout your building.

If the HVAC system does become the transport means for hazardous bacteria, the facility must be thoroughly cleaned and tested before the building is safe for occupancy. As noted in many local news stories regarding the various contaminated government facilities, this process is tedious, labor extensive (expensive), and very time consuming. During this process, the contaminated portions of the building, or in some cases, the entire building cannot be occupied by anyone other than the testing and decontamination teams.

What are the "target" areas for potential biological contamination? The two highest priority areas in most facilities are the mailroom and the outside air intakes for the HVAC system. There is some good news associated with all of this bad news. Most bacteria and their associated spores are relatively large, from the perspective of HVAC system specialty filter manufacturers. Anthrax and other similar bacteria typically range in size from 1 micron to 6 microns. Although this does not sound very large, consider that HEPA style filters can remove 99.99% of air borne contaminants down to 0.3 microns! There are also technologies available that can actually trap bacteria in an air stream and neutralize it with ultra-violet radiation.

There are several steps you can take to control and limit the level of exposure and the spread of hazardous bacteria in your facility:

Develop a thorough understanding of how your building's HVAC system functions and how it distributes air throughout your building.

By understanding how the HVAC system in your building operates and distributes air throughout the facility, you will be able to work with your engineer to determine methods of isolating and minimizing the spread of biological contamination in the facility.

Isolate your mail handling area from the building and the building's HVAC system.

An important aspect in the control of the introduction of hazardous bacteria into the building is the design of the renovation of the mailroom and the mail handling areas. The mailroom should be designed to be isolated from the remainder of the building and should incorporate the following features:

1. A minimum of three areas should be included in the mail handling area design:
• A positively pressurized entry vestibule into the mail handling area to control the air flow into the area and prevent airflow from that area to the surrounding areas.
• A "sorting room" where the incoming mail is sorted but not opened.
• An "opening room" where all incoming mail is actually opened.

2. A dedicated exhaust system equipped with HEPA type filters to prevent biological contamination from escaping from the building.
3. Slab-to-slab walls separating each of the three mail handling areas from each other as wall as the remainder of the surrounding space. The walls must be caulked and sealed as air tight as possible and all system components that do not serve the mail handling areas should be relocated to adjacent areas. All penetrations in the mail handling area walls must be minimized.
4. Cleanable, sealed finishes such as epoxy-based paints, laboratory style ceiling grid system with washable tiles and a gasketed grid system, and a chemical resistant sheet vinyl flooring with "welded" seams.
5. Washable light fixtures suitable for use in wet locations.
6. Weatherproof electrical devices.
7. Stringent airflow management system design to maintain a mild negative pressure in the sorting room and a strong negative pressure in the opening room.
8. Bench mounted glove boxes with HEPA filter equipped exhaust connections (used for opening any suspicious mail) located in the opening room.
9. A supply of medical grade rubber gloves and personal filter masks rated for removal of particulate 0.3 microns and larger for all employees who work in, or visit, the mail handling area.
10. Take test swabs of the work surfaces in your mailroom 2 to 3 times weekly and have them tested for bacteriological growth. As an extra precaution, you can test each batch of incoming mail and store the mail in a secure, properly designed room, until the test result are returned before allowing the mail to be moved to the sorting room. Note that this will likely cause a 2 to 3 day delay in your internal mail delivery process.

Secure the area around the outside air intakes for the HVAC system.

In addition to re-designing your mail handling area, the outside air intake locations should be secured and inspected daily for suspicious packages, bottles, cans, etc. left in the vicinity of the intake. If the intakes are located on the roof, the roof should be closed to all but specifically authorized personnel. If located at grade level, cameras should be used to monitor the outside air intakes and regular security sweeps should be performed throughout the day by the security or engineering staff. Any observed items should be handled carefully or treated as potentially hazardous material and the appropriate authorities should be contacted.

Modify the HVAC system to incorporate filter and neutralization technology.

To provide additional protection to the building, the main air-handling units should be evaluated to determine if they can be retrofitted with high efficiency filter systems with UV radiation systems to kill bacteria trapped in the filter system.

Sound complicated and expensive?. Unfortunately, it can be. These modifications should only be performed once they have been thoroughly analyzed and designed by experienced professionals and installed by contractors specifically experienced in the installation of this technology. Unless properly designed, installed, inspected, and maintained regularly, these systems may not provide the desired level of protection and may result in a false sense of security.

With proper preparation, you can proactively implement plans, modifications, and equipment upgrades that will offer improved protection to your companies employees and facilities. However, it is important to remember that no system can provide 100% protection against all types of scenarios or threats. We can, however, work to minimize the risk of exposure of bacteriological contamination of our fellow workers and our office space by implementing the recommendations previously noted. After all, it is much easier to close the mail handling area, clean the washable finishes, replace the contaminated filters, and restore the area to full operation than to decontaminate an entire floor or an entire building.

Think of these recommendations as another form of insurance. You hope you will never need them, but if you ever do, the value of these preparations will be immediately apparent.