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Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
The Atlantic: Mail Disinfection
smauggie showed a fumigated cover in an earlier posting:
smauggie's Fumigated cover
-Paul
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Paul,
Thanks for the article.
I have some covers that were subject to radiation during the Anthrax scare. Still packed away from the move. Hopefully I will get access to them soon.
Vince
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Moderator note: Clean up on a post and subsequent meta discussion.
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Thank you for removing those posts, Angore. On to the OP:
I wonder if any microorganisms can survive on a used, water-activated stamp. Perhaps soaking stamps is a very dangerous activity! If so, I'm probably a ghost and don't realize it!
I've often wondered whether stamps with water-activated gum might retain the DNA of the person who licked the stamps. Would it not be wonderful in terms of provenance if we prove that the stamp or stamps on a given cover were licked by a particular famous (or infamous!) person? I'm imagining a collection of covers franked with particular stamps and proven to be sealed, stamped, and mailed by the people honoured on those stamps, for example Hitler's DNA (yuck!) on a cover with a Hitler Head stamp. It would probably be a very small collection!
Bob
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Hitler probably didn't lick his own stamps.... 
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I was researching early postage machines and learned that there was worry about spreading disease by licking postage stamps. That led to the Sanitary Stamp Packets, instead of stamps off a roll in postage vending machines.
This did precede the Spanish Influenza Plague of 1918, so maybe there was something to it!
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Drying is a very effective part of disinfection processes aimed at viruses. And heat.
When we were decontaminating poultry barns for influenza in Iowa in 2015, the standard was to have the barn's interior temperature above 100F for 3 consecutive days. And afterwards, we were doing environmental sampling aimed at detecting residual live virus. We never found any live virus. Time substitutes for temperature.
Once the moisture from licking a stamp has evaporated, the lifetime of most viruses would be limited to a few hours, at most.
The exception was smallpox virus. I have read that, at times, it was standard practice to simply pass a hot flatiron across a closed envelope to inactivate smallpox. Was probably quite effective.
-Paul
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09:44:30am
A fascinating new article in The Atlantic online magazine:
The Atlantic: Mail Disinfection
smauggie showed a fumigated cover in an earlier posting:
smauggie's Fumigated cover
-Paul
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re: Mail Disinfection
Paul,
Thanks for the article.
I have some covers that were subject to radiation during the Anthrax scare. Still packed away from the move. Hopefully I will get access to them soon.
Vince
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this post
re: Mail Disinfection
Moderator note: Clean up on a post and subsequent meta discussion.
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re: Mail Disinfection
Thank you for removing those posts, Angore. On to the OP:
I wonder if any microorganisms can survive on a used, water-activated stamp. Perhaps soaking stamps is a very dangerous activity! If so, I'm probably a ghost and don't realize it!
I've often wondered whether stamps with water-activated gum might retain the DNA of the person who licked the stamps. Would it not be wonderful in terms of provenance if we prove that the stamp or stamps on a given cover were licked by a particular famous (or infamous!) person? I'm imagining a collection of covers franked with particular stamps and proven to be sealed, stamped, and mailed by the people honoured on those stamps, for example Hitler's DNA (yuck!) on a cover with a Hitler Head stamp. It would probably be a very small collection!
Bob
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re: Mail Disinfection
Hitler probably didn't lick his own stamps....
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re: Mail Disinfection
I was researching early postage machines and learned that there was worry about spreading disease by licking postage stamps. That led to the Sanitary Stamp Packets, instead of stamps off a roll in postage vending machines.
This did precede the Spanish Influenza Plague of 1918, so maybe there was something to it!
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03:31:14pm
re: Mail Disinfection
Drying is a very effective part of disinfection processes aimed at viruses. And heat.
When we were decontaminating poultry barns for influenza in Iowa in 2015, the standard was to have the barn's interior temperature above 100F for 3 consecutive days. And afterwards, we were doing environmental sampling aimed at detecting residual live virus. We never found any live virus. Time substitutes for temperature.
Once the moisture from licking a stamp has evaporated, the lifetime of most viruses would be limited to a few hours, at most.
The exception was smallpox virus. I have read that, at times, it was standard practice to simply pass a hot flatiron across a closed envelope to inactivate smallpox. Was probably quite effective.
-Paul
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