Cindy Siggins, who works days at the Atherton Hall mailroom desk, thinks she might have caught something from handling students' letters and packages — but it wasn't anthrax. Not many people around the dorm offices have been sick recently, she noticed, so she could have picked up her common cold symptoms from processing U.S. and campus mail.

"Mail can be dirty," Siggins said, and it was a good idea to wash your hands even before Sept. 11. But with recent anthrax scares putting mail handlers on edge, there are now bottles of antiseptic lotion and warning posters about spotting suspicious envelopes placed in commons desks across campus.

Penn State has not experienced any major building evacuations because of people finding questionable things in the mail. Other colleges in the state can't say as much.

In the past two weeks, powdery substances compelled Mercyhurst College in Erie to shut down its Old Main and Dickinson College in Carlisle to close its HUB, until tests for anthrax turned up negative. Nearly a month ago, another threat emptied the University of Pittsburgh's student union building.

But the Penn State Hazardous Materials (HazMat) Response Team has hardly been idle. The squad, which handles cases throughout Centre County, has responded to 91 calls involving suspicious mail since Oct. 13, said Tom Harmon, director of Penn State Police Services. Thirty-one of those have been on Penn State's campus.

"This is a significant increase in HazMat calls. The HazMat team averages about 15 calls in a typical year," Harmon said.

During the past week, though, the amount of calls has dropped off, he added.

Three buildings have been evacuated in State College, but they were all off campus.

Nationally, there have not been any new cases of anthrax reported since Oct. 31, when a New York hospital worker died from the inhaled form of the bacterial disease.

Nonetheless, U.S. health authorities reiterated their calls for caution yesterday, according to Reuters reports.

"This is not over until the criminals are caught. We need to remain vigilant," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, acting deputy director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Penn State officials said they're taking that advice.

"Obviously, everyone's antennas are still up . . . It's a new world since Sept. 11," spokesman Tysen Kendig said.

Mailroom employees have been briefed on the potential dangers, encouraged to use their own judgment and given the option to wear gloves if they want. But Siggins said wearing gloves won't always prevent workers from unintentionally transferring contaminants from letters to things they happen to touch on the job.

Amanda Whitesel, a mailroom employee at Waring Commons in West Halls, said she thinks wearing gloves might actually make people more worried about the threat of suspicious mail. "You try not to let it get to you," Whitesel said of the scares.

Some universities closer to the sites of anthrax contamination have extended application deadlines after mail snarls associated with evacuating post offices.

Penn State has avoided such changes so far, due in part to the influx of prospective students applying over the Internet, said Steve Mostert, spokesman for undergraduate admissions.

"Our preference is that you use the Web . . . In August, we really began pushing that," Mostert said.

More people now choose to submit their application materials to the university electronically instead of sending them through the mail, he said.

Four Americans have died from anthrax this fall and 13 remain infected, according to CDC figures.