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Anthrax: Washington Postal Worker Called 911 Before Dying A Washington postal worker called 911 to contact emergency personnel on the day he died from inhalation anthrax and told the operator he had been near a letter that contained a suspicious powder, the Washington Post reported today. Meanwhile, government officials said the United States should remain on alert as the investigation into the recent U.S. anthrax incidents continued (see GSN, Nov. 8). Thomas Morris, who worked at the anthrax-tainted Brentwood Road mail facility (see GSN, Oct. 23), told 911 operators he believed he had been exposed to a suspicious powder that contained anthrax when he was in the vicinity of a fellow worker who handled an envelope with the powder inside a week earlier. He started to feel ill on Oct. 16 and went to the doctor two days later, he said, but the doctor said he was suffering from a virus and recommended Tylenol. Postal officials had told him that tests results on the powder for anthrax had come back negative, Morris told the 911 operator, but “I have a tendency not to believe these people.” The letter Morris mentioned passed through the Brentwood Road facility on Oct. 13, which may have been the same time that an anthrax-tainted letter sent to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) also went through the facility, according to the Post. The coincidence is startling, postal officials said. The letter Morris talked about, however, was not the same as the Daschle letter and did not contain anthrax, Postal Service Vice President Deborah Willhite said. The letter Morris mentioned was set aside when someone noticed powder leaking out of it and taken to the FBI for testing, Willhite said. “It was torn enough that powder was coming out of it,” she said. “The FBI had it tested, and it came back negative and the workers were informed that it was negative” (Justin Blum, Washington Post, Nov. 8). Source Remains Unknown The source of the anthrax used in the recent incidents was still unknown, Office of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said yesterday in a press briefing. “The investigation continues to preserve—we haven’t included or excluded either a domestic or an international source for the anthrax,” he said. “There have been some suggestions that it could be domestic, but that has not been confirmed in any manner, shape or form” (U.S. State Department transcript, Nov. 7). Baby’s Case Enters Medical Journal The case of a 7-month-old baby boy of an ABC employee who contracted skin anthrax (see GSN, Oct. 16), in a location where no traces of anthrax had been found, was so rare it caused the New England Journal of Medicine to report the case, according to USA Today. The lesion on the boy’s arm was initially believed to be a spider bite, said New York City physician Mary Wu Chang. “This was before the first New York anthrax case was known,” Chang said. Later tests would determine the cause was skin anthrax, a diagnosis doctors had not considered because they had no reason to, according to Chang. “In the whole country, there would be very few doctors who’ve seen anthrax,” she said. “It’s just so rare, unless you’re in a place with infected cattle. This was Manhattan.” The symptoms of the lesion, however, matched those of skin anthrax, according to USA Today. The arm was swollen from shoulder to hand and a sore on the elbow oozed out a sticky yellow fluid. The wound did not hurt, which is typical of anthrax, doctors said. “It looks terrible but it’s painless,” Chang said. “He didn’t feel 100 percent, but he would play and interact as if he wasn’t really ill.” The boy’s doctors chose to submit pictures of the lesion to the medical journal so other doctors could recognize the symptoms of skin anthrax and learn how to diagnose it early. The journal decided to release the article on the boy’s case before the issue’s Nov. 29 publication date because of “public health concerns” (Steve Sternberg, USA Today, Nov. 7). Postal Workers Try to Close Facilities The anthrax-tainted Bellmawr postal facility in New Jersey (see GSN, Nov. 1) was closed again yesterday after workers complained that clean up efforts had failed. The South Jersey Area American Postal Workers union asked a federal judge to close the facility after a government-hired contractor cleaned the wrong machine. A hearing has been set for next week to determine if Bellmawr should remain closed, according to the Associated Press (Associated Press/New York Daily News, Nov. 8). Compressed air used to clean mail-sorting machines at the Morgan mail facility in New York City are likely responsible for the spread of anthrax there, a public health expert testified yesterday. The New York Metro Area Postal Union has filed suit to close the Morgan facility after spores were found on five machines there. Whoever sent the anthrax “lucked into a perfect vector” as the bacteria and fears spread, Columbia University Professor Jeanne Stellman said (Jim Fitzgerald, Associated Press/RealCities.com, Nov. 8). Perpetrators May Have Killed Themselves in Attack, Experts Say Investigators are working with coroners’ offices to examine if those responsible behind the recent anthrax incidents may have killed themselves in the process, a health official said yesterday. “There may be perpetrators that may be ill and may have died” from handling the anthrax, said Scott Lillibridge, a bioterrorism advisor to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. Officials in New Jersey, where two of the anthrax-tainted letters may have originated, are looking through coroners’ records for deaths that may have resulted from anthrax, said State Attorney General’s Office spokeswoman Emily Hornaday. “They just haven’t found anything at this point,” Hornaday said. Some experts, however, are unsure that those responsible would have infected themselves. “If they knew anything about anthrax, they would have been on antibiotics beforehand,” said Greg Ackerman, a researcher at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “They would have limited exposure as much as possible” (Seth Borenstein, Knight-Ridder/RealCities.com, Nov. 8). World Anthrax Cases Preliminary testing on a suspicious powder found at an oil company in Vietnam came back positive, a Vietnamese Ministry of Health official said today. Another sample of the powder is being retested at the Central Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Hanoi, the official said. The powder was found between pieces of folded paper in a BP Petco meeting room in Ho Chi Minh City, General Manager John Kilgour said. Until conclusive test results were available, all findings were “purely speculative,” Kilgour said (Associated Press/RealCities.com, Nov. 8). A letter mailed to the U.S. Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan tested negative for anthrax (see GSN, Nov. 6), U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday. Preliminary tests by Pakistan on the letter had tested positive. Further testing done at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, however, came back negative, Boucher said. “Speculation about foreign origins of anthrax spores is rather uncalled for, one might say, given the result,” Boucher said (Alan Sipress, Washington Post, Nov. 8).
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