WASHINGTON (AP) – Packages weighing less than a pound – enough to hold the explosives carried by unsuccessful shoe-bomber Richard Reid – should be screened before they are shipped on passenger planes, Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said Friday.

Markey, a member of the Select Committee on Homeland Security, sent a letter to Homeland Security Department Secretary Tom Ridge saying failure to screen small cargo packages is “an unacceptable security risk that must be immediately remedied.”

Markey held a news conference at Logan International Airport in Boston to urge Ridge to take action, then flew to Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington to hold another news conference.

“It is unseen and unscreened. It is taken right off these trucks and it is loaded right on to passenger planes right under the feet of passengers who have just taken off their shoes to have them screened,” Markey said at the Boston news conference.

Transportation Security Administration spokesman Brian Turmail said small U.S. mail packages are not screened because federal studies have concluded that less than a pound of explosives in the cargo area “is not going to bring an aircraft down or threaten passengers.”

He said small packages from other than the U.S. Postal Service are checked to make sure they are from approved shippers. And he said the TSA is trying to develop better electronic screening technology and tighten restrictions on larger air cargo.

It would cost an estimated $500 million in the first year to buy equipment and add personnel to screen all cargo.

Under current guidelines, mail weighing less than a pound is not screened and not checked through a program that identifies shippers requiring closer scrutiny.

The weight limit is inadequate, said Markey, noting the Reid’s shoe bomb contained only 10 ounces of plastic explosives. And, he said, the bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 170 people, contained from 11 ounces to a pound of Semtex plastic explosives.

“The TSA knows that explosives in even these small quantities can cause tremendous damage to passenger airplanes,” said Markey. “Explosives weighing less than one pound and hidden in unscreened luggage took Pan Am 103 out of the skies – Americans should not be told that small unscreened packages do not threaten them.”

Reid, a British citizen and member of al-Qaida, tried to light explosives in his shoes on a Paris-to-Miami flight in December 2001 but was overpowered by passengers and crew. The flight was diverted to Boston, where Reid was arrested.

He was sentenced to life in prison in February after pleading guilty to eight charges, including attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

Turmail said Reid’s explosives were in the passenger section of the aircraft, not subject to cargo screening.

AP-ES-08-08-03 1757EDT

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