State Post Bureau steps up checkups after deadly mail leakage

The State Post Bureau of China on Sunday announced to boost safety checkups in the post sector after a deadly mail leakage killed one person. In a mail from Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, to Weifang, eastern China's Shandong Province, a kind of chemical leaked and caused casualties, said a statement on the bureau's website. More checkups will be launched to see whether express delivery enterprises examine goods for mail on the spot, the statement said. Also, more checkups will focus on whether post workers refuse to take the businesses if clients refuse to let them verify the goods inside or refuse to provide relevant proofs or effective identity cards, the statement said. The Shandong provincial branch of the bureau said a mail carrying liquid chemical methyl fluoroacetate leaked on Nov. 28 when workers of Weifang Jieshuntong Express Delivery Company Limited, a franchise of YTO Express, was handling mails and it sickened some of the workers. But the rest mails were distributed the next day. Among the contaminated mails, one went to Liu Xingliang in Dongying, Shandong Province, as his wife had bought online a pair of shoes for their child. Liu was sickened and died. His wife was sickened and hospitalized. The highly toxic chemical is widely used in dye, medicine and pesticide.