Anthrax Appears in the Midwest
The Associated Press
Nov 1 2001 6:43PM
WASHINGTON (AP) - The fear of anthrax spread to the Midwest on Thursday with a preliminary finding of contamination at a Kansas City postal facility. Investigators established a link between the death of a woman in New York and more than a dozen cases of the disease elsewhere in the country.
The bacteria that killed Kathy T. Nguyen were ``indistinguishable from all the others,'' including the strain in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, said Dr. Steven Ostroff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Officials said they had not yet learned how the woman became sick.
Nearly one month into America's bioterrorism scare, the threat seemed to be receding in the nation's capital, but New Jersey asked the Bush administration for hurry-up help in testing more than one thousand postal facilities. It appears the state ``is the front line of the anthrax attack on our nation,'' wrote acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco.
In a cruel irony, officials said the suspected spores found in Kansas City, Mo., had likely been exported from the nation's capital.
``The assumption at this point is that this is a contamination process from Brentwood,'' the main postal facility in Washington that has been shut down for more than a week, said Rex Archer, the Kansas City health director. The idea is that spores ``settled out of the air and got on these envelopes.''
The preliminary test results at a specialty postal facility - coupled with the discovery of spores at a private Indiana company - marked the first known spread of spores off the East Coast in the nation's month-long struggle with bioterrorism.
The results were predictable.
More than 170 area postal workers in the Kansas City area joined thousands of other Americans on antibiotics and local officials moved quickly to reassure the public.
The positive test results came from swabs taken on two bags of employees' trash in the first-day cancellation section of the Stamp Fulfillment Center, said Gary Stone, the facility's manager. At a news conference, he said that the affected portion of the facility had been closed and that it had its own ventilation system.
``The mail that we found and sequestered, which is where the samples tested positive, did not come through the mail stream with any letter that might end up in your home,'' he said.
Officials disclosed the presence of a small amount of anthrax on a printer in a private mail maintenance center in Indiana on Wednesday. Peter Beering, terrorism preparedness coordinator for Indianapolis and Marion County, said the printer was among several items shipped to the firm for servicing from a contaminated mail-processing center in Trenton, N.J.
Despite the discovery of contamination in four Food and Drug Administration mailrooms in suburban Maryland during the day, officials in the nation's capital said they believed the city had weathered the worst of its own struggle with bioterrorism. ``We are in a different day,'' said Dr. Ivan Walks, the city's health director, as authorities said some of the thousands of residents taking antibiotics could stop their medication.
More than four weeks after the first anthrax diagnosis, the CDC said it had confirmed 16 cases in all. That included 10 of the inhalation type - including four deaths - and six of the less dangerous skin variety.
New York City health officials have confirmed three additional cases of skin anthrax, using a looser standard than the one used by federal authorities.
The latest to die was Nguyen, a 61-year-old hospital worker in New York City whose death has particularly troubled investigators because they can't establish how she contracted her disease.
``We have yet to detect the clues that would identify the source of her infection,'' said Dr. Julie Gerberding, deputy CDC director. In particular, she said there are ``no clues to suggest that mail or the mail handling was the cause of her exposure.''
Tests on Nguyen's apartment in the Bronx as well as the Manhattan Eye Ear and Throat Hospital where she worked have thus far discovered no contamination. An initial positive finding from a bag of the clothing she was wearing when she arrived at the hospital has since been shown to be negative, said New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
And a co-worker's lesion, deemed troublesome on Wednesday, also has tested negative for anthrax.
Still, Gerberding said the investigation suggests Nguyen was not exposed in a public place because there have been no additional reports of illness. ``It's somewhat reassuring that this was not something that posed a broader threat,'' she said.
One month into an outbreak of disease unlike any other, Gerberding said public health experts were ``on a steep learning curve'' for anthrax, determining, for example, that individuals can become ill with cutaneous anthrax without having a ``conspicuous opening'' on their skin.
With contamination turning up widely, she also said authorities were ``working on how to draw the line between the safe levels of spores in an environment and those situations where there's a health risk.''
The issue could take on increasing prominence as additional reports of small amounts of contamination are confirmed.
``We don't know what that safe level of anthrax is,'' said Walks. ``It's kind of like being a little pregnant.''
The Associated Press
Nov 1 2001 6:43PM
WASHINGTON (AP) - The fear of anthrax spread to the Midwest on Thursday with a preliminary finding of contamination at a Kansas City postal facility. Investigators established a link between the death of a woman in New York and more than a dozen cases of the disease elsewhere in the country.
The bacteria that killed Kathy T. Nguyen were ``indistinguishable from all the others,'' including the strain in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, said Dr. Steven Ostroff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Officials said they had not yet learned how the woman became sick.
Nearly one month into America's bioterrorism scare, the threat seemed to be receding in the nation's capital, but New Jersey asked the Bush administration for hurry-up help in testing more than one thousand postal facilities. It appears the state ``is the front line of the anthrax attack on our nation,'' wrote acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco.
In a cruel irony, officials said the suspected spores found in Kansas City, Mo., had likely been exported from the nation's capital.
``The assumption at this point is that this is a contamination process from Brentwood,'' the main postal facility in Washington that has been shut down for more than a week, said Rex Archer, the Kansas City health director. The idea is that spores ``settled out of the air and got on these envelopes.''
The preliminary test results at a specialty postal facility - coupled with the discovery of spores at a private Indiana company - marked the first known spread of spores off the East Coast in the nation's month-long struggle with bioterrorism.
The results were predictable.
More than 170 area postal workers in the Kansas City area joined thousands of other Americans on antibiotics and local officials moved quickly to reassure the public.
The positive test results came from swabs taken on two bags of employees' trash in the first-day cancellation section of the Stamp Fulfillment Center, said Gary Stone, the facility's manager. At a news conference, he said that the affected portion of the facility had been closed and that it had its own ventilation system.
``The mail that we found and sequestered, which is where the samples tested positive, did not come through the mail stream with any letter that might end up in your home,'' he said.
Officials disclosed the presence of a small amount of anthrax on a printer in a private mail maintenance center in Indiana on Wednesday. Peter Beering, terrorism preparedness coordinator for Indianapolis and Marion County, said the printer was among several items shipped to the firm for servicing from a contaminated mail-processing center in Trenton, N.J.
Despite the discovery of contamination in four Food and Drug Administration mailrooms in suburban Maryland during the day, officials in the nation's capital said they believed the city had weathered the worst of its own struggle with bioterrorism. ``We are in a different day,'' said Dr. Ivan Walks, the city's health director, as authorities said some of the thousands of residents taking antibiotics could stop their medication.
More than four weeks after the first anthrax diagnosis, the CDC said it had confirmed 16 cases in all. That included 10 of the inhalation type - including four deaths - and six of the less dangerous skin variety.
New York City health officials have confirmed three additional cases of skin anthrax, using a looser standard than the one used by federal authorities.
The latest to die was Nguyen, a 61-year-old hospital worker in New York City whose death has particularly troubled investigators because they can't establish how she contracted her disease.
``We have yet to detect the clues that would identify the source of her infection,'' said Dr. Julie Gerberding, deputy CDC director. In particular, she said there are ``no clues to suggest that mail or the mail handling was the cause of her exposure.''
Tests on Nguyen's apartment in the Bronx as well as the Manhattan Eye Ear and Throat Hospital where she worked have thus far discovered no contamination. An initial positive finding from a bag of the clothing she was wearing when she arrived at the hospital has since been shown to be negative, said New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
And a co-worker's lesion, deemed troublesome on Wednesday, also has tested negative for anthrax.
Still, Gerberding said the investigation suggests Nguyen was not exposed in a public place because there have been no additional reports of illness. ``It's somewhat reassuring that this was not something that posed a broader threat,'' she said.
One month into an outbreak of disease unlike any other, Gerberding said public health experts were ``on a steep learning curve'' for anthrax, determining, for example, that individuals can become ill with cutaneous anthrax without having a ``conspicuous opening'' on their skin.
With contamination turning up widely, she also said authorities were ``working on how to draw the line between the safe levels of spores in an environment and those situations where there's a health risk.''
The issue could take on increasing prominence as additional reports of small amounts of contamination are confirmed.
``We don't know what that safe level of anthrax is,'' said Walks. ``It's kind of like being a little pregnant.''
