Last Updated

11 Dec 2002

Source: Washington Post, January 18, 2002.

EDITORIAL

When Buildings Get Anthrax

THE SENATE'S Hart Office Building was supposed to reopen today, three months and $10 million in cleanup costs after an envelope of anthrax was unsealed in the office of Majority Leader Tom Daschle. No such luck. At the eleventh hour, officials found a bag containing protective equipment above a corridor ceiling. No anthrax was found on the equipment, but Senate officials canceled the reopening and put everyone in the vicinity on antibiotics pending further test results.

So much high-profile confusion has surrounded the treatment of anthrax in people that it's easy to overlook the equal perplexity that attends treating it in buildings. Authorities have learned a lot about cleaning up anthrax in enclosed spaces, a task deemed so difficult that a pre-Sept. 11 analysis had dismissed it as "impractical and . . . not indicated." But a distressing number of questions remain unanswered, from what would constitute a "safe" level of anthrax after cleanup to how workers' health will be monitored after they return. And decisions made at Hart will shape those waiting to be made at a long list of other sites.

Lines of authority have been as tangled on cleanup as on antibiotic treatment. A 1998 presidential directive gave the Environmental Protection Agency the lead on decontamination after a bioterrorism attack. But the EPA doesn't make the decisions; those are the job of designated "incident commanders" within the agencies -- the Senate's sergeant-at-arms, the postmaster general and so on. They must decide when to declare a building safe for workers' return. But that call is based on how clean is "clean" where anthrax is involved -- a public health question for which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still have no answer.

In its absence, the EPA in the Senate has been aiming for a goal of "zero growth" -- that is, no evidence of live spore presence on test strips put out after each round of disinfection with chlorine dioxide gas. That's understandable given mounting uncertainty about how many spores it takes to cause the disease; the mysterious New York and Connecticut cases have caused speculation that a single spore might suffice, and senators are in a position to demand very high levels of reassurance. But such assurances are expensive and in some buildings may be physically unattainable. Are all other anthrax-affected buildings to be abandoned, or scrubbed and re-scrubbed at staggering expense, for lack of a reasonable alternative safety strategy to absolute cleanliness?

Before October there was no U.S.-registered pesticide approved for use against anthrax; approvals of chlorine dioxide gas and two other cleaning agents were rushed through, but their environmental safety over the long term has had to be inferred from cases not quite parallel, such as the use of chlorine dioxide on fruit and municipal water supplies. Monitoring workers' health after cleanups is a must -- another task for which no one agency has explicit responsibility. The main need, though, is for a faster and more orderly response, whether in a future attack or in buildings already idled by past ones.