JFK Custom agents were sickened by fumes from 'beauty supplies'

Two employees at Kennedy Airport Sunday fell ill after being exposed to beauty supplies in a mail package, not nerve gas as some reports speculated, according to an FBI spokesman in New York.

Initial reports said the two employees, which a law enforcement source said were U.S. custom agents, may have been exposed to a kind of nerve gas called VX after initial testing. But Peter Donald, the FBI spokesman, said “the package in question was determined to be beauty supplies and nothing further.” He added that the employees and the package were tested.

The offending substance that caused the two workers to feel dizzy and nauseated was nail polish remover headed to a beauty salon on Long Island, according to sources imediately involved with the investigation. The package had gone through a mail sorting facility near the airport, away from passenger terminals, the sources said.

The two workers got sick after opening the mail at 9:40 a.m. Later, at 2 p.m., they were transported to Franklin Hospital in Long Island in stable condition, an FDNY spokesman said.

Donald earlier said the agency had responded to the incident “out of an abundance of caution.”