The moment a staff member opens a piece of mail and discovers an unidentified powder, or finds a suspicious liquid container in a common area of your building, everything changes. What happens in the next 60 seconds will determine the scope of exposure, the number of people affected, and the complexity of the emergency services response that follows. Without specific training, even well-intentioned, quick-thinking staff can make decisions in that moment that significantly worsen the situation.

Substance threat training gives your people the knowledge, the protocols, and the practised responses to handle these incidents correctly — minimising harm, protecting bystanders, and supporting effective emergency services response from the very first moment.

What Is a Substance Threat?

A substance threat involves the deliberate or suspected deliberate use of a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or other hazardous material to cause harm, fear, disruption, or psychological distress. The range of substance threats that Australian workplaces may face extends from anonymous powder letters sent through the mail — a tactic that has been used repeatedly in Australia and internationally to target government agencies, courts, financial institutions, and media organisations — to threats involving liquids, gases, or other materials introduced into a building’s common areas, food supply, or ventilation.

While mass-casualty substance attacks involving genuine agents of significant lethality are rare, the frequency of substance threats — including those involving harmless materials intended purely to cause fear and disruption — is considerable. And the response to a substance threat must always be based on the assumption that the material is dangerous, because the cost of under-reacting to a genuine hazard is catastrophic.

Why Standard Emergency Training Is Not Enough

Businesses that have invested in fire warden training and evacuation planning have taken an important step in emergency preparedness, but that training does not address substance threats. In fact, the default response to most workplace emergencies — evacuate the building — is directly contraindicated in many substance threat scenarios. Evacuating staff through an area potentially contaminated by an airborne agent, or allowing people who have been in contact with a substance to disperse throughout the building, can spread contamination and increase the number of people affected.

Substance threat response requires a fundamentally different instinct: contain, isolate, decontaminate, communicate. Training replaces the wrong instinct with the right one.

Identifying a Suspicious Substance or Package

Substance threat training begins with recognition — teaching staff to identify the indicators that should prompt heightened concern and a cautious, trained response. For mail and parcels, these indicators include:

• Unexpected correspondence with no return address or a suspicious sender
• Unusual weight distribution or packaging
• Staining or residue on the outer envelope
• A fine powder visible inside or around the packaging
• Unusual odour
• A package that was not expected by the recipient

For items found in common areas — powder deposits on surfaces, unusual liquids, unfamiliar containers — training covers the assessment process that distinguishes ordinary environmental contamination from a potential deliberate substance threat.

For a more detailed overview of handling suspicious items, see our guide on how to effectively handle a situation involving a suspicious package.

Training is clear about the default position when in doubt: treat the item as suspicious, and activate the substance threat protocol.

Immediate Response Actions for Staff

When a staff member encounters a suspected substance, their immediate actions must be rapid and correct. Training covers the priority sequence:

1. Stop handling the item immediately and move away from the area without disturbing others
2. Alert colleagues in the vicinity to move away calmly and without physical contact with potentially contaminated surfaces
3. Notify security and management using the designated communication pathway
4. Call 000 if there is any evidence of exposure or a visible hazardous material
5. Prevent others from entering the area until emergency services arrive

If exposure has already occurred — if powder has been inhaled, has contacted skin or eyes, or if someone is showing symptoms of exposure — the response escalates. Training covers basic decontamination steps that staff can take while awaiting specialist emergency response, including how to minimise ongoing exposure and how to support affected individuals without increasing their own risk.

Protecting High-Risk Roles: Mail Room and Reception Staff

Mail handlers, reception staff, and anyone who regularly processes incoming deliveries are on the frontline of substance threat risk. They are the first point of contact for mail-based substance threats and need specific, role-relevant training that equips them for this particular exposure.

First 5 Minutes delivers targeted substance threat training for these roles — covering safe handling protocols, the use of appropriate personal protective equipment where relevant, escalation procedures, and the communication pathway that activates the organisation’s full response.

Organisational Response Planning

Beyond individual staff training, substance threat preparedness requires documented response plans, clear escalation pathways, and designated responsibilities for key roles including the Chief Warden, security manager, and communications lead. First 5 Minutes supports organisations in developing these plans as a complement to staff training — ensuring that individual knowledge connects to an organisational emergency response framework.

The Psychological Dimension

Substance threats — even when they prove to be hoaxes — are deeply unsettling. Staff who are exposed to a substance threat event, whether directly or as witnesses, can experience significant psychological distress. Training covers post-incident support expectations and helps staff understand what to expect in the aftermath of an incident, reducing anxiety and improving recovery.

Be Ready Before It Happens

Substance threats are a foreseeable risk for many Australian organisations. Meeting your WHS duty of care requires that foreseeable risks are assessed and managed — and that includes ensuring your staff are trained to respond correctly.

Integrating Substance Threat Training Into Your Broader Preparedness Framework

Substance threat training is most effective when it is part of a comprehensive threat preparedness program that also addresses bomb threats, active threats, and personal threat scenarios. This integrated approach ensures consistent response behaviours across all threat categories, reduces confusion about which protocol applies in ambiguous situations, and maximises the return on your overall training investment. First 5 Minutes can design and deliver an integrated threat preparedness program that covers the full spectrum of threats relevant to your organisation.

Contact First 5 Minutes or call 1300 321 120 to arrange substance threat training for your team.