Last Updated

09 Jan 2003

Source: Wall Street Journal, March 8, 2002.

SPECIAL REPORT: WORKPLACE SECURITY

Security Heightens Across the Nation

By RACHEL ZIMMERMAN

AT THE YORK Jewish Community Center in York, Pa., the threat of terror has meant tightening security in previously unthinkable ways. Such as the fishtank.

After Sept. 11 and the subsequent anthrax bioterror attacks, says Richard Lyons, the center's executive director, he was moved to take all sorts of precautions -- including converting an aquarium into a sorting box for mail from unknown senders.

"The staff started saying, 'What happens if…'" notes Mr. Lyons, whose center offers child-care, education and diversity programs to its members. "Of course, we all wish it could be like it was, but the reality is, it's not, and we have to take the appropriate steps and actions to make employees and the public feel they are safe and protected."

Addressing the potential for biological or chemical attacks after Sept. 11 has been a priority for businesses and nonprofits of all sizes and sectors across the country, say security consultants and executives. Changes, both radical and minor, range from new rules for mail handling to stricter guidelines on who can enter a building to updated, more comprehensive emergency-response plans.

Indeed, Kroll Inc., a New York-based security firm, says that 86% of businesspeople interviewed in October as part of a survey conducted in New York, Boston and Toronto said they viewed emergency planning as "important," up from 34% before Sept. 11. Similarly, 89% of those surveyed said physical security was an "important" priority, up from 40% prior to the attacks. The new reality of bioterror has had a sobering effect: 71% of respondents said hazardous-materials preparedness was now critical, compared with only 24% who thought containment of dangerous materials was important prior to the terrorist attacks.

Living With the Fish Tank

Even companies that seem to face a relatively low risk of bioterror attack -- like real-estate-management operations -- have begun to step up security.

Steve Paulson, a Chicago-based vice president with Grubb & Ellis Co., a New York-based real-estate-services firm that manages corporate and government properties nationwide, says that the company's Web-based emergency guidelines for 25 situations were amended after Sept. 11 to include bioterror, and the "incident management" section was expanded to let people know what specific steps to take in a major crisis.

One of the crises people seem to fear most is an attack by mail. Jerry Hauer, a security expert with Kroll, says that when it comes to bioterror, there has been "significant concern about letters."

Companies have a range of options to safeguard themselves. For $5,000 or more, depending on the size of the room, a company can create a separate mail center by sealing all doors and all existing air vents and installing a separate ventilation system. As early as this month, they'll be able to purchase a mail-handling product, a single unit that combines a steamer and an ultraviolet light in a sealed tank that will cost between $2,000 and $5,000. The theory is that the steam will heat anthrax spores and interfere with their activity; meanwhile, the light will let mail openers see inside the envelope to detect any suspicious substances.

But security experts warn that the spore-heating theory hasn't been proved yet. And some experts are wary of many of the high-tech security devices hitting the market. Ed Seuter, president of Explosive Countermeasures International, a security consulting firm in Virginia, says that right after Sept. 11, myriad new security specialists popped up, many selling expensive new -- but largely untested -- products. "I call these people Sept. 12ers," he says. "All of a sudden they're here saying, 'We're experts, we can fix all your problems.'"

There are cheaper choices for safety-conscious companies -- like simply educating mailroom personnel to be on the lookout for dripping, oddly shaped or mysteriously addressed mail. And latex gloves are $2.49 at Rite-Aid.

Mr. Hauer says that he is advising many of his clients -- a range of large and small businesses, none of which wished to be identified or to discuss new security measures -- to install cameras and alarms in and around air-ventilation systems and in mechanical rooms. "Clearly, the most vulnerable part of the building is the air conditioner or air-handling system," Mr. Hauer says, "where wide dissemination of potentially toxic chemicals can take place."

He adds there is also growing concern about so-called dirty bombs, laced with radioactive material from a hospital, nuclear plant or manufacturing facility, for instance, that can contaminate the environment when detonated.

For the York center, whose previous experience with workplace threats has been a smattering of anti-Semitic letters, the threat of bioterror has completely changed the mailroom.

Previously, mail was delivered directly to the staff mailboxes. Now it gets dumped into a Tupperware container and transported to a separate storage room with no internal ventilation, where an administrative assistant wearing rubber gloves separates it into two categories: letters and packages from known senders, and mail from unknown senders. The mystery mail then goes into the aquarium-turned-security-box.

Transformed through creative construction and plumbing connections, the sealed, black-bottomed fish tank has two openings on its side, into which the mail opener can slip his or her hands and open the mail safely. According to the center's newly developed protocol, if any substance is found, the employee must change into an extra set of clothes in the storeroom, call the front desk by cellphone and alert administrators to immediately contact local law enforcement.

Greater Watchfulness

For people who have been dealing with biological and chemical threats for years, the events of September and October have led to renewed vigilance about security.

Over the years, abortion clinics have dealt with anthrax hoaxes, arson and more than 100 chemical attacks involving butyric acid, used to manufacture perfumes, pharmaceuticals, disinfectants and gasoline. Then, in October, at the height of the anthrax scare, hundreds of abortion clinics across the nation received anthrax hoax letters. Although the suspected sender has been arrested, nobody has yet been charged.

"What we have done is aggressively gone back to people and reviewed safety measures to see what the experience was and whether that worked or not," says Anne Glazier, security director for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "What's dangerous is having no plan at all."

Indeed, one lesson learned from the anthrax-tainted mail sent last fall is that it takes only a handful of confirmed cases to frighten an entire population and send an overburdened public-health system into a frenzy. "We now know you can achieve the same level of terror by just hitting a few people," Ms. Glazier says. "If there's someone sitting around planning the next attack, they've learned it doesn't take much -- a few random people will do."

At the Center for Menstrual Disorders and Reproductive Choice in Rochester, N.Y., Morris Wortman and his wife, clinic administrator Rebecca Wortman, instituted a new mail-opening policy in late 1999, after their billing clerk opened a letter and a mysterious white powder flew out. Now, donning a surgical mask and latex gloves, Ms. Wortman opens the mail herself every day in a separate office next to the clinic with no ventilation system. She decided to take on the task, in part, because "I know pretty much what we should be getting and I wouldn't want anyone else to get hurt -- God forbid. And I don't have any children."

Unfortunately, such vigilance has rarely been the rule among businesses and nonprofits, says Kevin Surette, a security consultant in Litchfield, Maine. "Security is not an income generator, it's a cost generator," he says. "People want to spend as little as possible." After Sept. 11, these people "woke up and said, 'Jeez, we have to do this.'"

Preparedness is key, security experts say, because the next wave of terror could involve agents that haven't been used yet -- such as more-refined biological weapons like smallpox or ebola, "something that spreads easily," says Ms. Glazier of Planned Parenthood.

Still, the hard truth is that there remains a certain strain of terrorism that simply can't be avoided. Mike Perelman, a Pennsylvania security consultant who works with abortion clinics, public and private agencies and the York center, among others, says: "All of security is based on the fear or concern of the person carrying out the act that he will be captured, arrested or killed. If a person who has none of these fears walks into the front door of a hospital emergency room, or anyplace else, the person will succeed."

--Ms. Zimmerman is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal's New York bureau.