Last Updated

17 Jun 2003

Source: USA Today, January 23, 2002.

Anthrax at D.C. offices deadlier than first thought

By Laura Parker, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- Aides to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle were exposed to the heaviest levels of anthrax ever documented among humans -- from several hundred times the lethal dose to as much as 3,000 times a fatal amount, their doctors say.

The massive exposure occurred when an anthrax-laden letter was opened in Daschle's office Oct. 15. About 70 staffers were affected by an exposure that set off a behind-the-scenes debate among government doctors over what treatment would work.

"We are completely in uncharted waters," said Greg Martin, a doctor at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland who is treating the aides.

The Hart Senate Office Building, shut down three months ago, reopened Tuesday after an anthrax spores purging that cost $14 million. Fifty senators have offices at Hart, including Daschle. About 5,000 people work in the building.

Martin said the exposure levels for the Daschle aides are estimates based on a Canadian study last year that measured exposure levels after simulated anthrax was released in a room. He said he is confident the aides are no longer at risk because they have been treated with antibiotics and the anthrax vaccine.

Details of the medical drama are emerging from conversations with doctors, aides and health officials. They include:

• On the second day of the crisis, doctors were so alarmed by the rapid growth of bacteria cultured from aides' nasal swabs that they reserved beds at Bethesda Naval Hospital in anticipation of a large number of aides becoming ill.

• Martin wanted to vaccinate 70 workers immediately to protect them against any spores that remained in their lungs after they completed a 90-day regimen of antibiotics. But nearly two months passed before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made the vaccine available.

  The delay was caused in part by a disagreement over whether the vaccine would be effective. It was also unavailable for civilian use when the crisis occurred.

• In the first week, CDC epidemiologists and other health officials tracked down every person who had been in the Hart building that day and could have been exposed. This included constituents from several Midwestern states and a pizza delivery man.

The seriousness of the danger to the Senate aides has not been fully explained because no one on Capitol Hill ever became ill, and the aides involved had been reluctant to talk about their ordeal.

Attention focused on the city's Brentwood mail distribution center, where two postal workers died of inhalation anthrax after spores leaked from the Daschle letter when it traveled through the facility's mail-sorting machines.

The difference between the postal workers and the Senate staff is that the Capitol Hill aides knew immediately they had been exposed and were treated with antibiotics within hours. That prevented any infection from developing. The postal workers were unaware they had been exposed until after several became ill.

"People say, 'Well, nobody got sick,' " said Laura Petrou, Daschle's administrative assistant. "That's not luck. Nobody's gotten sick because we worked very hard at it."