Last Updated

27 Dec 2002

Source: Washington Post, January 1, 2002.

Hart Treatment Ends; Crews Test for Spores

By Ceci Connolly, Washington Post Staff Writer

Workers finished fumigating the Hart Senate Office Building in the wee hours yesterday and should know within a week whether they successfully removed the deadly anthrax spores delivered in a tainted letter in mid-October.

Jennifer Browne, a spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency, said contractors finished releasing chlorine dioxide gas into the building's ventilation system about 2:30 a.m.

Afterward, crews collected "spore strips" covered with harmless test bacteria that should "tell us how effective we were in the fumigation process," Browne said.

Only a small fraction of the congressional, postal and media workers potentially exposed to anthrax have opted to take an experimental vaccine offered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said yesterday that less than 100 people have joined the voluntary vaccine program and more than 700 are taking extended courses of antibiotics as an alternative.

Because they are not certain whether anthrax spores can survive in a person longer than 60 days, federal health experts have offered vaccine or additional antibiotics to anyone exposed to the mailings.

The anthrax attacks hit the nation's capital Oct. 15 with delivery of a letter to the Hart offices of Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.). Two days later, the building was closed, displacing about 50 senators, their aides and other congressional employees who work in the large, modern structure a few hundred yards from the Capitol.

Relying largely on private contractors, the EPA has overseen the cleanup using liquid chemicals, special vacuums and, finally, the chlorine dioxide gas. But the first round of gas fumigation, initiated Dec. 1, left trace amounts of anthrax bacteria. Officials tried a second fumigation Dec. 17. That work was delayed by mechanical problems until this past weekend, Browne said.

When the new test results come in, experts at the CDC will consult with the EPA on whether it is safe to reopen the building.

About 2,100 workers at Washington's Brentwood postal station face similar uncertainty about when they might be able to return to that facility. Decontamination of the Brentwood station and a contaminated post office in New Jersey will not be completed until officials reopen the Hart Building.

Two Brentwood workers died of pulmonary anthrax, and two others became seriously ill with the disease. Nationwide, five people have died in the series of mail attacks.

In New York, most postal workers have returned to the Morgan Station sorting facility despite the news that a "negligible amount" of anthrax bacteria was found on one machine there. William Smith, president of the New York Metro Area Postal Union, urged union members not to return to the Manhattan building and said the union would likely go to court over the issue.