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British Response: Officials Reveal 1960s Tests The British Public Record Office released documents yesterday describing two tests conducted by the British Defense Ministry in the 1960s to determine how biological weapons would spread through the London subway system, the London Times reported. The documents, which were originally scheduled to be released in March 1995, had been withheld, probably over concerns that the British government might have been implicated in the Aum Shinrikyo subway attack in Japan that month, according to the Times. In the first test, conducted in 1962, scientists threw a powder puff loaded with nonhazardous Bacillus globigii spores — which are often used to simulate anthrax — mixed with talcum powder from the window of a moving subway train, according to documents released yesterday. A second test was conducted in 1964. The British scientists, from the Porton Down Chemical and Biological Warfare program, obtained a supply of the Bacillus globigii spores from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., according to the released documents (Helen Studd, London Times, Feb. 27). Samples taken after the 1962 test found that the bacteria had traveled more than 10 miles in the subway system from the release point, according to the recently released information. The highest concentration of spores was found in the subway cars themselves. “It would seem most likely that the spores were carried in the cars,” wrote the scientists conducting the tests. During the second test, a battery-operated device built into a briefcase was used to take samples. In the second test, it took the spores 10 minutes to reach the Tooting Broadway subway station, as opposed to 15 minutes during the first test, the released information said. “This simple trial shows that bacterial spores can be carried for several miles” in the subway system, said the released information. “Trains traveling through such an aerosol became heavily contaminated internally” (Audrey Woods, Associated Press, Feb. 26).
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