WASHINGTON – Two postal workers in the nation’s capital are apparently dead of anthrax, and two more were hospitalized Monday with dangerous pulmonary anthrax infections, escalating bioterrorism’s toll on America.
At least one of the two dead postal workers handled congressional mail.
Preliminary tests suggested anthrax as the cause of death, pending conclusive results.
“It is very clear that their symptoms are suspicious, and their deaths are likely caused by anthrax,” said Tom Ridge, director of the federal Office of Homeland Security. U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher told CNN “it does seem highly probable that those two deaths were related to inhalational anthrax.”
The newest cases shifted the bioterrorism scare to the nation’s capital after a spate of cases had surfaced in Florida and New York City news media offices, and in a Trenton, N.J., postal facility. One Washington postal worker was diagnosed with a pulmonary anthrax infection Sunday, and a second on Monday. Both remain hospitalized in serious condition.
Health authorities in the District of Columbia are watching nine other people who are displaying symptoms consistent with anthrax infection, said Dr. Ivan Walks, the capital city’s top health official. He said he did not know how many of the nine were postal workers or how many had been hospitalized.
A trail of anthrax spores connects the postal centers to the Capitol building. A letter tainted with anthrax was found in the offices of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle last week, and 28 Capitol workers, including six police officers, have tested positive for exposure to anthrax, which doesn’t guarantee they will contract the disease.
The letter to Daschle would have passed through the postal facility where the latest victims worked – the Brentwood mail processing center, which employs about 2,000 postal workers and is about 15 blocks north of the Capitol. Some 2,000 employees at the Brentwood facility and at an airmail-processing center near Baltimore/Washington International Airport are being tested.
Officials were still trying to understand how the workers became infected. To succumb to a pulmonary anthrax infection, a person would have to inhale thousands of anthrax spores. The Daschle letter was sealed, raising doubts that it was the only anthrax-tainted letter to pass through the Brentwood center.
“I don’t think we can close the door on the question: Are there more packages?” said Michael Powers, a research associate at the Washington-based Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute.
Congress prepared to return to its regular business Tuesday after the Daschle letter prompted lawmakers to close congressional office buildings to allow crews to scour offices and the Capitol for traces of anthrax. Officials found evidence of anthrax spores in four Capitol locations. Congressional office buildings will remain closed Tuesday pending results from environmental tests.
Co-workers said Monday that one of the deceased workers, whom officials and colleagues identified as Thomas Morris, worked in a section of the Brentwood center that handled government mail. The Daschle letter likely would have passed through that work station.
Several postal workers from the Brentwood station complained Monday that they should have been tested last week, immediately after officials confirmed that the Daschle letter contained anthrax. Hundreds of Capitol Hill workers were tested last week and received antibiotics.
“They know where it came from and we are the only official mail section,” said Brentwood postal clerk Phyllis West. “They should have been on this like white on rice.”
“I’m very upset,” said Carol Cunningham, a postal employee for 35 years. “We should have been tested.”
At a White House news conference late Monday, Ridge and postal, city and federal health officials defended their decision not to test Brentwood employees sooner, saying they were “following the science.”
Officials tested a postal substation office that gets mail from Brentwood, screens it and sorts it before it goes to the Capitol. Initially those tests were negative, but further test results over the weekend found anthrax in the substation.
“We were taking it one step at a time to determine what in fact we ought to be doing as far as tracing back, very systematically, following the science, and that’s where we had been at that point,” said Deputy Surgeon General Kenneth Moritsugu.
Ridge defended the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying: “They obviously proceeded aggressively on the Hill in response to that threat. Again, it was a little different; they knew they had a hot spot, they had identified it. It took a little while to learn they had a problem at Brentwood.”
Past investigations in Florida and New York showed that postal workers weren’t at risk, so that was a factor too, added Dr. Mitch Cohen of the CDC.
The latest anthrax infection – caused by inhaling the bacteria – is the fourth confirmed pulmonary case since anthrax infections began to appear along the East Coast two and a half weeks ago. Boca Raton, Fla., photo editor Robert Stevens died of the disease earlier this month. Before that, there had been no such cases in the United States since 1978.
Six other anthrax cases have been in the form of cutaneous (skin) infections, which are much easier to cure.
The rising toll of anthrax victims escalated the anxiety of postal workers, who fear they are becoming the front line facing bioterrorists. So far 4 of the 10 reported infections have been postal workers – the two confirmed inhaled-anthrax cases in Washington and two skin infections in Trenton, N.J.
The FBI said it was too soon to link any of the new anthrax incidents to the earlier ones. More complete testing and investigation are needed.
Coming only weeks after the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings, which destroyed the World Trade Center towers in New York and damaged the Pentagon, speculation about the source of the anthrax has focused on Osama bin laden, other terrorist groups from abroad or Iraq.
The State Department said Monday that it knew of no clear link between the anthrax outbreak and Iraq.
“We don’t put anything past (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein, but I don’t believe there is any clear linkage at this point,” said State Department spokesman Philip Reeker.
Anthrax is also available in the United States, and one former FBI agent who worked on domestic terrorism cases said checking access and reports of stolen or missing samples from labs would be a normal investigative strategy.
Gregg Mann, a spokesman for Specialty Laboratories in Santa Monica, Calif., which specializes in testing for hepatitis and HIV, said there are a few hundred state and local health department labs that stock anthrax for “confirmatory tests” for anthrax. The spores are needed, he said, to compare them to a patient’s samples.
Mann said that in the late 1990s the government placed more restrictions on labs that use anthrax. A special permit from the CDC is now required. After the latest round of anthrax infections, Mann said, the CDC also issued a “protocol” for any lab that finds a positive anthrax sample to report it to local or state public-health labs.
“It’s designed to centralize the information, so they can have the full picture and instances of anthrax,” Mann said.
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(Knight Ridder correspondents Lenny Savino, Seth Borenstein, Jackie Koszczuk and Chris Mondics contributed to this report.)
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(c) 2001, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.