Friday, November 2, 2001

Anthrax threat found in Midwest postal facility
By Laura Meckler
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Preliminary tests Wednesday found anthrax spores in a Kansas City, Mo., postal facility, extending the anthrax threat to the Midwest.

More than 170 workers joined tens of thousands others on the East Coast who are taking antibiotics to ward off possible infection. Anthrax was also found at a private postal maintenance center in Indianapolis on equipment sent from a contaminated mail-processing center in Trenton, N.J.

The positive test results in Kansas City came in two spots on one trash bag where envelopes were discarded. Officials suspected the source of the anthrax was mail that had passed through the contaminated Brentwood facility in Washington.

Just outside Washington, anthrax was found in yet more government buildings, with preliminary postive tests in four Food and Drug Administration mail rooms. Postal authorities began picking through piles of decontaminated mail, searching for a possible unopened tainted letter.

In New York City, investigators reported “no clues” to suggest the mail is to blame for the anthrax death of a local hospital worker, and the hunt continued for an explanation for how someone outside the mail or the media was infected. Dozens of investigators traced Kathy T. Nguyen’s final steps in an attempt to find out how she was infected with inhalation anthrax.

“We are reviewing the routes that mail might have traveled to reach her,” said Dr. Julie Gerberding of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “So far we have found no clues to suggest that the mail or the mail handling was the cause of her exposure.”

Still, Gerberding said, the investigation suggests Nguyen was not exposed in a public place because additional patients have not turned up. “It’s somewhat reassuring that this was not something that posed a broader threat,” she said.

Investigators found that the anthrax involved responds to antibiotics, she added, and officials suspect that Nguyen may have sought treatment too late for the drugs to work.

Disease detectives were studying Nguyen’s life after she fell victim to inhalation anthrax on Wednesday, the fourth person to die since the anthrax-by-mail attack was discovered nearly a month ago. Her death had officials worried that the anthrax attack, so far concentrated among postal and media employees, could be spreading to a new group of Americans.

“We need to find out how she was infected,” said Surgeon General David Satcher. “It’s very strange.”

And authorities awaited test results for a Nguyen co-worker at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital who has a suspicious skin lesion.

Anthrax has killed four people and infected six others with the dangerous inhalation form of the disease. An additional seven people have been infected with the highly curable skin form.

The FDA said Thursday that preliminary tests found anthrax spores in mailrooms of four of its five Rockville, Md., buildings where mail is processed. While confirmatory tests are pending, the FDA closed all mailrooms for cleaning and put its mail handlers on preventive antibiotics.

In Vilnius, Lithuania, a lab confirmed Thursday that traces of anthrax were found in at least one mailbag used by the U.S. Embassy in the former Soviet Baltic republic, marking the first known appearance in Europe.

The news was better inside Washington’s postal system, where three post offices closed for decontamination reopened and city officials reconsidered whether thousands of mail handlers in private offices and outlying post offices need to take preventive medicine, as was recommended last week. Nearby, the Baltimore Air Mail Facility was reopening when testing found no anthrax after the facility had been shuttered for nearly two weeks.

“We have gotten our arms around this and we may be on the other side,” said Dr. Ivan Walks, the city’s chief health officer.

Not so in New York, where investigators were puzzled by the death of Nguyen, a 61-year-old Vietnamese immigrant who checked into the hospital three days earlier.

edated and using a ventilator to breathe, she was never able to provide investigators clues about where she might have encountered the deadly bacteria.

Environmental testing at her Bronx apartment and at the outpatient hospital where she worked found no evidence of anthrax.

Investigators worked to assemble the pieces of her life, a difficult task given that she lived alone and had no close family. They searched her home, interviewed neighbors, tracked down friends and tried to figure out where she might have traveled during the final days of her life.

The woman worked in a basement supply room that had recently included a mailroom, but there were no reports of suspicious letters or other obvious cause for alarm.
John Nolan, deputy postmaster general, tried to again reassure Americans that their mail is safe. “Compared to almost anything else you do in life, handling the mail is among the safest things you could possibly do,” Nolan said on NBC’s “Today.”

Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said consumers also should feel confident about the safety of their food supply, though she recommended thorough washing of fruits and vegetables and thorough cooking of meat.

There was anxiety over the case of a 51-year-old New Jersey woman who was diagnosed earlier in the week with skin anthrax. She told authorities that she did not recall opening any suspicious mail at the accounting firm where she works, and investigators have not discovered any other way that she may have been exposed to anthrax.

That suggests that innocent mail may have been contaminated while it was processed, said Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the CDC.

“The risk from mail is not zero. It is very low but it’s not zero,” Koplan said Wednesday. “That low amount of risk may translate into cases occasionally such as this.”

Also in New Jersey, officials reported a new suspected case of skin anthrax involving a postal worker who lives in Delaware. The man, who was not identified, works in Bellmawr, N.J., and if his case is confirmed, it will be the first in the state outside the Trenton area.