Wed, Oct 31, 2001 page24

• Anthrax brings out entrepreneurs

  ONLY IN AMERICA Gas masks, mail sterilizers and full-fledged bio-shelters are the newest craze in a country with a history of entrepreneurs whose fortunes rise and fall with the misery index

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  Polaris International is worried that the government is not doing enough to protect you from an anthrax attack.

  But the company has a solution: the Bio-Shelter, a plastic tent that looks like a large square bubble and comes complete with an air-filtration system. Polaris says the product will keep the whole family safe in the event of a massive germ attack. The Bio-Shelter, developed and brought to market after Sept. 11, costs US$1,975.

  The country's history and fiction are replete with entrepreneurs whose fortunes rise with the misery index. Now the terrorist attacks and anthrax infections have led to a mushrooming array of anti-anthrax devices -- everything from vitamins to germproof bodysuits to mail sterilizers. While some products and services are legitimate, many more are suspiciously expensive or of dubious value in the battle against biological attacks. Nevertheless, people are buying.

  

  A tent sold by Bio-Shelter of Flat Rock, Michigan is said by its vendor to protect a family from a bioterrorist attack while still being able to operate the television with the remote control. The tent, which sells for US$2,000, is said to be pressurized and air filtered.

  PHOTO: NY TIMES

  Experts are hardly surprised about the activity, but skeptical about the results. "We are going to see new capabilities and new products as we reorganize to deal with global terror," said William Martel, professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College in Newport, R.I. But the products that have come out so far, he said, seem to be ineffective.

  "It is just people looking for security," he said, "in the face of systemic insecurity."

  Some companies selling anthrax-related products have repackaged existing merchandise to capture a perceived new market. Alpha Medical equipment in Hempstead, New York, has been selling medical sterilizers since 1986, but primarily to doctors and dentists. These days, it is promoting its steam-and-dry sterilizer to corporate offices as a way to detoxify mail.

  

  A family tests out the Bio-Shelter.

  PHOTO: NY TIMES

  Never mind that anthrax has proved to be surprisingly heat-resistant, which is why the US Postal Service is looking at irradiation technology to kill any spores. Chuck Fishelson, vice president of Alpha Medical, says he is providing a "solution to a terrible problem."

  "I am not saying this is a public service," he said of the sterilizer, which retails for US$2,799 and is designed for plastic medical devices instead of paper mail, "but we have cut our margins." The company has sold 27 in the last week, he said, and is in discussion with 150 potential customers.

  While Fishelson says he is cutting his margins, that does not seem the likely case with other purveyors of anthrax-related products and services. Until three weeks ago, Biorecovery Inc, a New York City-based company, specialized in cleaning blood from crime scenes at roughly US$2,000 a pop. Last week, however, it was hired to clean the headquarters of ABC News, which it charged some hundreds of thousands, according to Ronald Gospodarski, president of the company.

  Gospodarski bristles at the thought that this is profiteering, however. "You can't compare the two kinds of jobs," he said. Factors like expense of labor, size of the offices, delicacy of the equipment being treated all conspired to make the work more expensive. "Sure you need to make a profit to stay in business," he said, "but it is not like cleaning an office with a mop and a rag."

  While consumer advocates arch their eyebrows at unorthodox items like mail sterilizers and bubble-tents, their real ire is aimed at more pedestrian and commonplace items. Merchants of every stripe are selling a dazzling array of gas masks -- Israeli-issue masks have particular cachet -- and other protective gear.

  Typical of the species is a firm called N-B-C-Warfare (the letters stand not for a television network, but for "Nuclear, Biological, Chemical"), which offers a Mail Room Protection Package for US$512. It includes a protective bodysuit, a gas mask, and a pink plastic container with matching lid that the company calls a "suspicious mail receptacle."

  "The thing that is particularly troubling is that gas masks are an industrial and military product," said Jeffrey Fox, a senior editor with Consumer Reports, speaking not about any company's offerings in particular. "They are not regulated for a mass consumer market. They are designed to be used by people who are properly fitted or trained."

  For sure, said Manny Peraza, the president of Polaris, who added that he developed the Bio-Shelter after noting such drawbacks. "When this attack took place, everybody was running around buying gas masks. But I'm a designer, so I am always thinking out of the box. I said, we as common-folk people have to come up with something to protect our families."

  Peraza said his Flat Rock, Michigan, company had made 1,000 Bio-Shelters, and so far, sold 15. "Once the general public knows about this item, we'll have a hard time keeping it on the shelf," he predicted.

  But it gets a cool reception from Martel, the national security expert. "Only in America," he said.
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