Last Updated

10 Dec 2002

Source: Washington Post, October 30, 2001.

Anthrax in Five More D.C. Buildings

Officials Troubled by Infection of N.J. Woman Who Doesn't Work in a Mailroom

By Avram Goldstein and Michael Powell, Washington Post Staff Writers

Tests revealed the presence of anthrax spores at five more government offices in downtown Washington yesterday, and officials said a New Jersey woman who does not work in a mailroom has contracted the skin form of the disease.

In another sign of the contamination spreading from the District's central postal processing plant to other mail facilities, tests found traces of anthrax spores in mailrooms at the Supreme Court building, the State Department, an Agriculture Department agency and at a federal building in Southwest where the Department of Health and Human Services and Voice of America have offices.

Similar traces were found at a nearby building used by the Food and Drug Administration. Officials also announced that anthrax spores were found in a mail pouch at the U.S. Embassy in Peru, which receives correspondence through the contaminated State Department mail center in Sterling.

But for federal health investigators, the new anthrax case in New Jersey seemed to be the day's most important development. Although the skin form of anthrax is not life-threatening and the unidentified woman is recovering, she may be the first person to be infected by ordinary mail delivered to a home or business.

The woman, a 51-year-old bookkeeper who had a lesion on her forehead, works in Hamilton Township, N.J., near the mail-processing building that handled the bacteria-filled letters mailed to Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw and the New York Post. Until now, anthrax infections had occurred only among people working in the mail-delivery system or in offices where the tainted letters were opened, and health authorities had said the chance of a postal customer getting the disease from cross-contaminated mail was very unlikely.

Officials have launched environmental tests at the woman's office and home.

"There's no operating theory right now for how she got infected," said George DiFerdinando, New Jersey's health commissioner. "Environmental testing will tell us a whole lot more."

The announcement came two hours after officials with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told District health officials that they are reconsidering whether it is necessary to conduct environmental testing of mailrooms in as many as 4,000 private organizations in the Washington area that receive unsorted mail from the central District processing plant on Brentwood Road NE.

CDC officials also said they were rethinking their recommendation that employees in those workplaces start taking antibiotics, explaining that information available today would help them reach a decision. D.C. and federal officials said they have a list of the 4,000 organizations but do not plan to release it. Postal officials said they instead would make contact with the customers if necessary.

District health officials said they took comfort in the fact that of the private firms that have performed environmental testing in their mailrooms, none has reported positive results. They acknowledged, however, that they did not have information on how those tests were conducted. Maryland officials are running similar tests at 22 private mail facilities, and they said results on the four tests that have come back were negative.

The new positive test results on downtown federal buildings bring to about 20 the number of contaminated sites in the Washington area.

Because of the anthrax spores found in the basement mailroom of the Supreme Court, the building will remain closed at least through today. As it was, the court conducted business outside its courthouse yesterday for the first time in 66 years because of a positive test last week at a remote Supreme Court mail facility. The justices heard oral arguments at the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse.

Health officials said the nine justices are taking antibiotics. The court declined to comment.

In the two Southwest Washington buildings where the VOA, the FDA and HHS have offices, swab samples at 22 sites in the mailrooms turned up seven preliminary positive results. Workers elsewhere in the building continued their business, but there was nothing routine about it.

"People are very concerned," said VOA news director Andre de Nesnera, whose newsroom broadcasts in 52 languages, including the Dari and Pashto languages of Afghanistan.

The agriculture department announced late yesterday the closure of the mailroom of the department's Economic Research Service at 1800 M St. NW, after trace amounts of anthrax bacteria were found there. The office receives its mail from the Brentwood Road postal facility.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman in Lima, Peru, said anthrax was on the interior of a canvas mailbag. None of the letters or packages inside was opened, which the spokesman said suggested that the mail picked up the anthrax spores through "incidental contact" as it passed through the State Department mailroom in Washington.

Fern Finley, a spokeswoman for the American Federation of Government Employees, said she heard from several nervous State Department workers yesterday. "People are concerned that even though the department is doing what they think is best, they don't know whether this is enough. There's the worry that they don't really know what to do."

In South Florida and New York, postal unions filed lawsuits charging that the U.S. Postal Service has been dragging its feet in efforts to protect employees. In Florida, the American Postal Workers Union said it wants increased testing of workers, more masks and gloves and decontamination of postal facilities.

The union's New York chapter is seeking to force closure of the city's biggest mail-sorting center, where traces of the anthrax bacteria were found on four machines Thursday, though postal officials did not confirm that until Friday. About 7,500 workers are in that facility.

"We've tried a number of times in the past three weeks to talk to them, and everything we have tried has failed. We have had to bring in psychiatrists to help with the workers' anxiety attacks. It's all too much," said Judy Johnson, president of the local union, which has about 4,000 members.

In New Jersey, officials announced that a postal worker, who has been released from the hospital, was a confirmed case of inhalational anthrax. She was hospitalized Oct. 15 and is recovering at home. She worked at the central mail-processing facility in Hamilton Township. Authorities did not release her name or age.

She was the second case of pulmonary anthrax in New Jersey; a West Trenton letter carrier, also a woman, was the first. She remains hospitalized, but is doing well, said state epidemiologist Eddy Bresnitz.

The improving health of these and other workers defies past fatality rates of 80 to 90 percent for inhalation anthrax, Bresnitz said. "We're getting a different experience, tempered by modern antibiotics, and the state of the art of medical care," Bresnitz said. "We're seeing that if you catch people early enough, they can survive."

Last night, New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said a 61-year-old Bronx woman who works in a stockroom near the mailroom at Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital is in "very, very serious" condition, and is on a respirator, after testing positive for inhalation anthrax in preliminary tests. Final test results on the woman, who checked into a hospital late Sunday, are expected today, Giuliani said.

Health officials said the New Jersey bookkeeper who contracted the skin form of anthrax noticed the lesion on her forehead Oct. 17. The next day, she went to a doctor, who cultured the infection and found it negative for anthrax. In the days that followed, however, her face grew puffy and swollen, and the lesion began oozing.

She checked herself into a hospital Oct. 22 and received antibiotics for five days before being released Saturday.

Just hours before her case was revealed to the public yesterday, a top CDC official had insisted in a midday conference call with reporters that the likelihood of an individual postal customer getting infected through cross-contamination of the mail was very small.

"There have been no documented cases at all of an individual getting a letter personally from [a contaminated] facility and winding up getting disease," said Anthony Fauci, an infectious disease official at the National Institutes of Health.

It was another example of how the anthrax situation has unfolded at a dizzying pace that has left government officials and scientists constantly reevaluating their every move.

D.C. Health Department Director Ivan C.A. Walks said he will wait for the CDC to advise him on what to do about the private mail facilities in the Washington area.

He said he sees three options. The government could clean up all operations that received mail from the contaminated Brentwood mail-processing facility, without any testing; it could perform environmental testing at all of them and clean up contaminated sites; or officials could test a subset of them and draw conclusions from the sample results.

On Capitol Hill, Environmental Protection Agency officials told senators that they are prepared to fumigate the entire Hart Senate Office Building with chlorine dioxide to kill anthrax bacteria from a letter opened in Daschle's office two weeks ago. The plan will be reviewed by experts this week.

Meanwhile, mail delivery was uneven across the District, with some downtown businesses finally getting some of their backlogged mail for the first time in a week. Because a post office in Southwest Washington was closed last week when anthrax spores were found in a sorting room, large areas of Southwest and Southeast went without delivery.

At a town meeting hosted by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) at the Washington Convention Center last night, many of the 300 residents in attendance asked about the next phase of the response. Would Brentwood workers get their swab tests back? Would Brentwood machinery be sterilized?

The federal and local officials at the meeting often were unable to give answers.

Even the Supreme Court faced uncertainty when it moved into the Prettyman Courthouse yesterday. No anthrax tests had been performed at the building when the move was announced Friday, even though the courthouse was receiving mail directly from the Brentwood facility as recently as Oct. 20. The courthouse was chosen because of an agreement that makes it available to the high court in emergencies.

Last weekend, the Supreme Court arranged to have tests performed in the ceremonial courtroom. No problems were detected, according to one source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. As of yesterday, the rest of the building had not been tested for anthrax spores.

Staff writers Justin Blum, Daniel LeDuc, David A. Fahrenthold, Christine Haughney, Bill Miller, Sylvia Moreno, Ellen Nakashima, Eric Pianin, Sue Ann Pressley, Dale Russakoff, Michael D. Shear, Leef Smith, Jamie Stockwell, Martin Weil, Linda Wheeler and Scott Wilson contributed to this report.