Last Updated

11 Jun 2003

Source: Newsday, November 7, 2001.

AMERICA'S ORDEAL

By Patricia Hurtado, Staff Writer

The chief epidemiologist for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention testified that anthrax now poses a "negligible" health risk for postal workers at the city's largest mail sorting facility.

Dr. Stephen Ostroff, who heads the CDC team investigating the outbreak of anthrax cases among postal workers in New York City, New Jersey and the Washington, D.C., area, testified yesterday as an expert witness for the United States Postal Service in Manhattan federal district court.

City postal workers at the Morgan mail sorting facility in Manhattan filed the suit against the postal service seeking to close the facility down until it can be thoroughly cleaned of any traces of anthrax. Officials said anthrax was detected on six mail sorting machines at Morgan in mid-October.

Ostroff testified that medical research has shown that anthrax poses the deadliest health risk during the first two weeks after exposure to the spores. He said that since the anthrax-tainted letters were mailed to NBC News, ABC News and the New York Post on Sept. 18, the health risk anthrax posed to mail sorters would have been "from mid- to late September."

"The risk is basically very, very low," Ostroff said. "I'm talking about close to zero....Therefore we do not see a justification for closing the facility. We felt that it was not an unsafe work environment." Ostroff said decontaminating a building of anthrax is "extremely difficult." He said workers were given antibiotics like Cipro "as an extra effort to assure the workers."

Asked by Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Alter, who is representing Postal Service if it was "inconsistent" that the service shut down mail facilities in Washington and Trenton, N.J., after anthrax was detected but not after it was found at Morgan, Ostroff replied, "I don't find it inconsistent."

But John Bachmann, a technician who repairs the sorting machines, described haphazard cleaning practices he observed at Morgan.

Bachmann said that after anthrax was found on machines on Oct. 24, the clean-up crew "isolated" them by stringing up yellow police tape while workers stood nearby working on other machines. He said the machines were wrapped in plastic rather than isolated and decontaminated.

He said that although the area was cordoned off, it was not sealed off from the rest of the room.

Staff writer Martin C. Evans contributed to this story.