Facebook Warehouse Evacuated After Mail Tests Positive for Poisonous Nerve Agent Sarin
Silicon Valley Facebook employees evacuated after a package sent to one of the company’s mail facilities tested positive for a poisonous chemical agent on Monday.
Four buildings in Menlo Park, where the company is headquartered in Northern California, were emptied after a package was “deemed suspicious,” Facebook spokesperson Anthony Harrison told PEOPLE in a statement.
“At 11:00 AM PDT this morning, a package delivered to one of our mailrooms was deemed suspicious,” Harrison said.
“We evacuated four buildings and are conducting a thorough investigation in coordination with local authorities,” the statement continued. “Authorities have not yet identified the substance found. As of now, three of the evacuated buildings have been cleared for repopulation. The safety of our employees is our top priority and we will share additional information when it is available.”
The mail tested positive for the nerve agent sarin when undergoing routine machine inspection, Menlo Park Fire Marshal Jon Johnston said, according to a report by the Associated Press. Menlo Park Fire did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Johnston said that there were no injuries to report so far.
“Right now we don’t have anybody that has any symptoms,” he told the AP. “We’re just doing verification.”
There is a possibility that the test could be a false positive, local ABC7 journalist Chris Nguyen reported on Twitter on Monday.
Sarin is a man-made chemical nerve agent, which is the “most toxic and rapidly acting of the known chemical warfare agents,” according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention‘s website.
Symptoms of exposure to the chemical — which was originally created in Germany as a pesticide — vary in severity, ranging from runny nose and watery eyes to diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, headache and changes in heart rate or blood pressure.
People who are mildly exposed to the agent usually recover quickly, according to the AP’s report.
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