Those who donate to charities — and seniors especially — are prone to getting their names on mailing lists that lead to a large amount of daily junk mail that can create hazards.

FORT WORTH, Texas — A Texas woman is more than a little concerned about her 87-year-old father.

"My father," she said, "is being buried alive."

To substantiate her claim, the woman opened the front door of a modest south Fort Worth, Texas, home and guided a visitor past the cluttered living room and down a dim hallway.

Her dad, a retired World War II veteran who lives alone, can no longer eat at his breakfast table. The table is piled with envelopes of all sizes, a 3Z\x-foot mountain — an avalanche — of unopened junk mail. Some of the mailings had slid from the precarious and growing heap and lay scattered on the yellow linoleum.

That day, the man had received 56 more items.

"And 98 percent of it is junk," said the daughter, who, along with her father, is not being identified.

Boxes crammed with envelopes blocked the back door. Junk mail resting along the baseboards of the entry hall created another safety hazard. During one visit, the daughter said, she discovered the gas stove top covered with mail.

Knowing the situation can't continue and aware her father needs help, she has begun calling or writing the senders and requesting her father's name be removed from the mailing lists.

About a year ago, the man began receiving far more mail than the U.S. Postal Service carrier can fit through the resident's mail slot.

Her father, the woman said, is a giving man. He sends about $2,500 a year to various charities. Now, many groups are hounding him, hoping to benefit from the octogenarian's generosity.

Each year, American households receive more than 100 billion pieces of direct or advertising junk mail. Junk mail distributed in the U.S. accounts for 30 percent of all mail delivered worldwide.

Consumers 65 and older are targeted with the most unwanted direct mail, according to a survey conducted by StoptheJunkMail.com and Harman Research. A person who responds to one mailing might end up on lists that are sold and resold.

Junk mail can become an endless merry-go-round.

In 2007, a Zogby poll reported 89 percent of Americans support creation of a Do Not Mail Registry that gives people the choice to opt out of wasteful and unwanted junk mail. In the past three years, at least 19 states introduced legislation that would create a Do Not Mail Registry similar to the Do Not Call Registry established in 2003 by the Federal Trade Commission. None of those bills passed.

However, the U.S. Postal Service needs direct mail revenue. Postmaster General John Potter told Congress in 2008 that do-not-mail efforts "threaten the viability of the mail."

According to a Congressional Research Service report, the Postal Service estimates it could lose $4 billion to $10 billion annually in revenue if all states passed a Do Not Mail Registry and all consumers registered for it.

The report said the Direct Marketing Association estimates that in 2007 almost 460,000 people were directly employed by direct-mail marketing. An additional 3.1 million were indirectly employed in jobs affected by direct-mail marketing — including manufacturers, customer service employees, mail deliverers and warehouse workers.