White Powder Found (UK)

Sky News ^ | 23:29 UK, Thursday April 22, 2004 | Sky News

[colette_g]

WHITE POWDER FOUND

About 70 members of staff are undergoing decontamination treatment after a suspicious chemical was found in their offices.

The white powder was discovered at the BBC-owned Galleon, which handles distribution, subscriptions, customer support, and merchandising sales for a range of magazines including many of the BBC's own publications, Private Eye, and Hello! magazine.

About 70 employees were in the building when the package was opened, and six are believed to have come into direct contact with the white powder, a spokeswoman for Kent Police said.

"We would like to stress that these are precautionary measures and there is little risk to those in the building or local residents," she added.

The powder will now be taken for tests to establish what it is.

More than 60 firefighters were called to the centre Sittingbourne Research Centre, on Broad Oak Road, in Kent, about 3pm.

The centre is advertised as the "largest single concentration of laboratories to let in the UK".

Other tenants at the 116 acre site, next to the M2 motorway, include major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies as well as technology-based businesses in the fields of environmental biotechnology, electronics, diagnostics, instrumentation and Information Technology.

Last Updated: 23:29 UK, Thursday April 22, 2004

[spodefly]

[July 4th]

The powder will now be taken for tests to establish what it is.

Once that is determined, £100 notes will be passed out to snort the discovery.

[NYC GOP Chick]

[Shaun_MD]

Some joker probably left some goodies, or baby powder laying around. (I hope)

[Shaun_MD]

You beat me to it ;)

[victoryatallcosts]

Probably. But, do you remember just where the Anthrax attacks were first detected?

[BurbankKarl]

Prince Charles dropped his coke vial

[victoryatallcosts]

I'm also a little surprised to see that the BBC owns Hello! and Private Eye. I mean, yeah- nationalized gossip rags?

My first guess would be someone who felt that they (or an idol of theirs) had been ill-treated.

Still, recall: the National Enquirer was the first one to get hit with Anthrax here. Perhaps al-Qaeda has something against tabloids.

[colette_g]

The most worrying thing is that it is a big distribution centre for very popular magazines. Obviously (and hopefully) this will turn out to be a nut or other sort of false alarm like most of these scares do, but it shows how easy it could be to get some sort of harmful substance distributed to large numbers of the public

[colette_g]

I think (I hope!) the firm just distributes those particular mags rather than them being BBC produced. Interestingly, the BBC fail to mention the BBC link in their report of the story at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/3651297.stm

[steve86]

Still, recall: the National Enquirer was the first one to get hit with Anthrax here. Perhaps al-Qaeda has something against tabloids.

Yeah, that's certainly the key point if it turns out to be a real attack...

[glock rocks]

why would islamofascists attack their leftist allies at bbc?

[Redcloak]

Since this is happening in the UK, we can rule out this...

[Imal]

"Anybody seen my stash?"

[Flipyaforreal]

LOL!!

[steve86]

I think it's odd that no preliminary test results have been released. Generally, these things don't even make the news unless there is a prelim positive and they certainly don't go to the trouble of decontaminating baby powder. Either there is a blackout or they are waiting until the sun comes up (or should that be until The SUN is published).