Last Updated

22 Jun 2003

Source: Reuters, February 4, 2002.

Anthrax at FCC Mail Facility Cross-Contamination

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The scant amount of anthrax contamination found at a U.S. Federal Communications Commission mail facility in Maryland last week was "consistent with cross-contamination of mail," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tests released on Monday showed.

The FCC's mail processing facility in Capitol Heights, Maryland, outside Washington, was tested last week as a routine precaution and one sample initially tested positive.

"CDC reported to the FCC today that the trace showed a very slow platelet growth which indicates a weak or very scant amount of anthrax consistent with cross-contamination of mail," the FCC said in a statement.

The agency is arranging for the facility to be decontaminated and retested. Mail deliveries, which have been halted, will not resume until the area is found to be anthrax-free, the statement said.

The FCC said it would also test the mail room at its Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, facility. The agency oversees and regulates the U.S. telephone, wireless, satellite, cable, radio and television industries.

Five people, including two postal workers, died of the inhalation form of anthrax and more than a dozen were infected in a series of attacks late last year. A Senate office building was closed for months after a potent anthrax-laced letter was sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

No one has been arrested in the attacks.

Eight contract employees work at the facility and while they were given the option of having antibiotics, the CDC has now recommended against them taking the medicine in part because it was only intended to be taken for inhalation anthrax and the trace found was so weak, the FCC said.