Perspective for Ricin Threat

The last time the poison derived from the castor bean plant made front-page headlines was in 1978. A Bulgarian secret service agent fired a pellet of ricin using a spring hidden in an umbrella, killing the dissident Georgi Markov in London. It was a Cold War scandal but not much more. How different things are in the cloud of fear generated by terror attacks and the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people in 2001.

Since the anthrax attacks, letters bound for federal offices in Washington have been shipped daily to New Jersey, where they are blasted with electron beams to kill bacteria. Congress gave the Postal Service $587 million to decontaminate offices and purchase anthrax-detection equipment. Now, Postal Service officials are pressing Congress for an additional $779 million for equipment to detect ricin and other “bioterrorist” toxins.

Ricin isn’t anthrax. It doesn’t cause disease and is much harder to spread. The aerosolized version that intelligence agents feared that terrorists might develop hasn’t materialized. Senators ousted from their offices by Marines in protective gear after ricin was found in their mailroom should question the size of the funding request.

Protecting public safety depends on keeping danger in perspective. In Washington, even as congressional offices were being scoured, the larger public concern was over lead found in the water of some homes in the city at levels 20 times above Environmental Protection Agency limits.

Congress’ evacuation after the appearance of anthrax in 2001 was unimpeachable because the bacterium had been turned into a highly refined powder that could be easily spread through the air. On Wednesday, however, some congressional leaders began asking reasonable questions about the reaction to ricin. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said he was “livid” about how “one terrorist spreading rat poison can bring the government to half-mast.”

The problem isn’t that legislators were inconvenienced but that the costly spectacle could encourage copycat crimes by anyone with a grudge and a recipe for a crude form of ricin obtained from a plant that grows in gardens -- and wild in Griffith Park.

Sending an envelope of ricin to Congress is a serious federal crime. But the Washington families fearing their children’s exposure to lead might wish for a little more balance in the public-health equation.