Irradiation - kills bacteria, electronics?

[McCarthy]

It seems the US Postal Service is set on the plan of irradiating mail to kill anthrax in the future. The debate of whether they should or not is one for OT, my question is what other than bacteria will be affected by the process?

As I understand there are a few different methods, electron beam, exposure to some radiative element...as you can see I'm not up on it, just noticed there are different methods and so the question would be if any problems with be the same with each.

So far I've heard film mentioned. That's it, all I've heard. I haven't heard a yes/ no on many common things we all mail back and forth. CDRs, RAM, flash rom, CPU, diskettes, harddrives, anything with chips for that matter...

If anyone knows about irradiating affects on such goods and would like to share I'd sure appreciate it. NOTE: I'm not saying it would affect any of those things listed, just giving a few examples of things I'm asking about.

Thanks!
--Mc

 

[pm]

It depends on the type of radiation. Quoting from usps.gov:

<< The Postal Service is purchasing electron beam systems and services to sanitize mail. The equipment will be used in select areas to kill any biological agent, including anthrax, inside or outside mail items. >>


Electron beam systems will not affect any form of electronics unless the power level is extremely high, or unless the item is actively turned on. The power levels used by the Post Office are likely to be substanitally lower than anything that could start to affect circuitry. Electronics are far more susceptible to the effects of alpha and gamma particle bombardment in medium energy levels, and X-rays at high energy levels. The effect of electron bombardment at realistic energy levels on a chip can be likened to simultaneously firing a million BB's at a tank. It will have no effect. CDR's, diskettes and harddrives are even more tolerant of radiation than chips.

 

[Svet]

Solid state components are pretty resilient. I work in the biomedical electronics field, and I have known technicians that used their digital multimeter or their PDA on a regular basis to test flouroscopy units such as C-Arms every time they worked on them. Now these units don't put out as much radiation as would be required to kill bacteria with one dose, but these electronic devices are hit with X-Rays on a regular basis for years without problem. I can't imagine the postal service using something of a high enough power to destroy solid state components. That much power is not neccessary to kill microorganisms and, the shielding required to protect people from that level of radiation would be stagering.