Last Updated

14 Jun 2003

Source: Baltimore Sun, December 18, 2001.

Former anthrax site called safe

Detrick Building 470 can be demolished safely, officials say

By Scott Shane, Sun Staff

FREDERICK - Today, the worst hazards for rare visitors to the decrepit seven-story building at Fort Detrick are peeling lead paint, asbestos insulation and pigeon droppings. But three decades ago, Building 470 was the heart of the nation's Cold War germ weapons program, a top-secret factory where anthrax was brewed by the tankful.

Army biodefense officials led a tour yesterday to reassure the public that Building 470 no longer harbors dangerous microbes and can be safely torn down. The National Cancer Institute, which has custody of the brick building, plans to demolish it but has not decided on a timetable, officials said.

Gazing up at a 40-foot-high fermenter where anthrax was produced through most of the 1950s and 1960s, reporters and television crews picked their way along creaking catwalks, stepped through broken glass and gawked at signs identifying decontamination showers.

"We made anthrax 24 hours a day, seven days a week," said Army retiree Orley R. Bourland Jr., 75, who worked as plant manager from 1953 to 1958 and helped lead the tour. "You couldn't put more than 1,800 gallons in the fermenter or it would foam and overflow."

Like other veterans of the biological warfare program, Bourland has found decades-old memories rekindled by the mailed anthrax attacks that have killed five people and sickened 13 others. He wrote homeland security chief Tom Ridge on Oct. 13 offering to share his expertise; he finally got a call from a Ridge aide last week, and the FBI is scheduled to interview him this week, he said.

Although the United States never used its biological arsenal, its capabilities were prodigious. The anthrax-laced letters that have so disrupted the federal government and postal system contained a few grams of dry powder. Building 470 produced about 7,000 grams of anthrax a week, according to Bill Walter, another retiree from the biowarfare program.

It is clear that the mail attacks did not use anthrax left over from the old offensive bioweapons program - a strain of anthrax called Vollum 1B, which is different from the Ames strain used in the attacks. In addition, except for small quantities retained for research purposes, the stocks of anthrax and other germ weapons were destroyed after 1969, when President Richard M. Nixon ended the offensive weapons program.

But the Ames strain has been used since 1980 by the Army at Fort Detrick and other facilities to test vaccines, equipment to detect bacteria and decontamination techniques. The Sun reported last week that the mailed anthrax is a genetic match for the "reference strain" of Ames anthrax used by the Army, although that strain has also been used at numerous other government and private laboratories.

While Fort Detrick has used only wet preparations of anthrax, the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah has made small quantities of dry anthrax that match the extraordinarily small particle size and concentration of spores found in the letters. The FBI has extensively questioned Dugway personnel, but the Army says it has kept close track and no anthrax is missing.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday that the mailed anthrax is "looking like it was [from] a domestic source," but he declined to elaborate.

After the offensive bioweapons program closed, some of its Fort Detrick facilities were taken over by the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, which studies dangerous biological agents to design vaccines and other defensive measures. Other buildings, including 470, became part of the cancer institute's Frederick campus.

For two years, an Army decontamination team worked to destroy every trace of dangerous viruses and bacteria, including in Building 470. Workers had produced not only anthrax there but also the bacteria that cause tularemia and brucellosis, two other diseases in the U.S. bioweapons arsenal.

Twice in 1970 and 1971, Building 470 was thoroughly decontaminated using formaldehyde gas, and hydrochloric acid was forced through pipes and valves that had once carried a lethal bacteria mixture. Scientists tested 1,500 locations for anthrax spores and other bacteria and found none.

But the building's odd design, with towering fermenters passing through several floors, made its re-use impractical. In addition, officials say, the damage caused by the caustic decontamination, as well as years of routine cleaning with chlorine, has threatened the structure's integrity.

After the mail attacks renewed public alarm about anthrax, Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, a 6th District Republican from Frederick, inquired about the status of Building 470. He had heard rumors over the years that it might harbor hazardous germs, making demolition too dangerous, he said yesterday.

But Maj. Gen. John S. Parker, the Fort Detrick commander, assured him that all traces of the weapons were long gone. To spread the word that the building can be taken down safely, Bartlett helped organize yesterday's tour.

"I wanted to make the point that badly contaminated buildings can be cleaned up," said Bartlett, who holds a doctorate in physiology and has worked as a researcher at IBM and the National Institutes of Health. "I don't think there's any building outside the Soviet Union where there was more nasty stuff than here."

Parker, who heads the Army's Medical and Materiel Command, said the recent anthrax attacks have underscored the importance of the defensive work being done at Fort Detrick.

"The research on some of these devastating diseases that are potential biological weapons has to go on," Parker said. "I think our research ... is validated by what this crazy person has done."