OVERSEAS PUZZLE

U.S. Confirms Anthrax in Chilean Letter

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and ANDREW C. REVKIN

Federal health officials yesterday confirmed the presence of anthrax in samples Chilean authorities said they had taken from a letter from Florida. But the anthrax was not the strain that had killed five Americans and was most likely to have originated in Chile, officials said.

In the search for a source, Chilean public health officials said they had found no traces of anthrax in the offices and other environs of Dr. Antonio Banfi, the pediatrician in Santiago who received the letter two weeks ago. They said they planned to provide American investigators with the letter, a solicitation from a medical publishing company in Orlando, Fla., for further analysis.

American law enforcement and health officials had expressed frustration in recent days that they did not have the letter, but only bacteria grown by Chilean officials from spores said to be taken from the letter. Because of that, they said, it was possible that the anthrax came from laboratory contamination.

Chilean public health officials yesterday discounted the possibility that the letter could have been contaminated in their laboratory.

The letter, carrying a subscription slip for a journal on infectious disease, did not follow the pattern of the other known tainted mailings, received by two senators and Tom Brokaw of NBC News. Those letters were postmarked in Trenton, did not have real return addresses and were written in rough block letters.

The letter in Chile was sent in a business envelope, from an actual business and had a typed address, rather than handwritten one. Also, unlike the others, the letter in Chile did not contain powder.

American and Chilean officials say as they dig deeper, nothing quite adds up.

"There is no doubt about it, the anthrax is confirmed," said Jeanette Vega Morales, director of the Institute of Public Health, the official Chilean national disease laboratory that conducted the first tests. She said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told her yesterday of their test results.

Dr. Banfi, a 56-year-old pediatrician, said that on the afternoon of Nov. 13 he received a letter at his clinic that appeared suspicious because of the strange combination of postal markings. Although the return address was Orlando, the postmark was Zurich, Switzerland. In fact, the letter was sent via DHL, which used a Swiss bulk mail shipper in New York and a Swiss postmark.

Dr. Banfi said he put the letter unopened in a plastic bag, sealed the bag with tape, and called the police.

The bag was in police custody for several hours before the police handed it over to the Institute of Public Health. Ms. Vega Morales said the letter was sealed when it arrived at her offices, and it was immediately taken to a high-security laboratory for testing.

"There's no chance of contamination in the lab," Ms. Vega Morales said. "And we do not believe that the envelope was deliberately contaminated with anthrax spores in Chile."

Ms. Vega Morales said the laboratory was outfitted with air filters and sanitized, compartmentalized work stations and staffed by technicians who wore protective clothing. She said there had not been a single accidental contamination in the laboratory where the tests were performed since it was built in 1997, and that no case of anthrax had been reported in Santiago since 1994.

No powder was found in the letter, but its insides were swabbed by technicians reaching into a sanitized cabinet with protective gloves. The specimen was stored and cultivated in a petri dish, tested positive for anthrax, and then sent up to the United States for further testing.

Ms. Vega Morales said that the disease-control centers had said that the strain of anthrax found in Chile was similar to strains that had been found in Turkey.

She said no contamination had been found in Dr. Banfi's office.

There was a brief rash of newspaper articles about the local anthrax scare, but Chileans have shown far more interest in tremors that some fear may mean that an earthquake is on the way.

Public medical authorities say Dr. Banfi's private practice has suffered greatly from the scare.

Dr. Banfi says he will take some time to adjust to his sudden fame, and he is taking the drug Cipro as a precaution. He is a soft-spoken man with an easy smile, whose small office is decorated with art posters and whose hobbies include tennis, swimming and reading poetry.

"It was random," Dr. Banfi said of the contamination. " `Send it to a doctor and see what happens' is what someone probably thought if it was an act of terrorism."

Dr. Banfi said he had undergone hours of questioning by the Chilean police about his politics and potential enemies, but added that he had neither strong political views nor enemies. "I'd prefer not to have the world's attention," he said. "I just want to attend to the children in peace."