U.S. postal officials are expected to release details today of plans for decontaminating the anthrax-tainted Brentwood Road mail-sorting facility in Washington, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, Feb. 15).

Officials cleaning Brentwood will model the project on the decontamination of the Hart Senate Office Building, in which crews successfully used chlorine dioxide gas to kill anthrax spores, the Post reported (see GSN, Feb. 7).  The Brentwood cleanup operation, along with the decontamination of a postal facility in Trenton, N.J., is expected to cost $35 million, postal officials said.

“If there’s any message I want to give you, it is that we’re going to make sure we get it right, so that there is an effective treatment and (Brentwood) is effectively decontaminated,” said Thomas Day, U.S. Postal Service vice president for engineering.  “We are absolutely committed to getting this done, but we need to get it done right.”

The Plan

To decontaminate the Brentwood facility, contractors will pump chlorine dioxide gas into the 17.5 million-cubic-foot building and keep the gas at a set concentration and humidity level for 12 hours, according to the Post.

There will be no one inside the facility during the decontamination operation.  Instead, engineers will operate Brentwood machinery remotely so every part is exposed to the gas.  There is no risk of a spark from machines igniting the gas, and the gas has been shown to be harmless to the machines, said Dennis Baca, Postal Service manager for environmental management policy.

After the gas has been in the building at the needed concentration and humidity levels, which engineers will monitor and maintain, it will be sucked outside the facility and made harmless by passing through scrubbers before being released into the outside air, the Post reported.  Hazardous material teams will then enter the building to collect more than 3,000 test strips for determining whether any anthrax spores remain.

Washington health officials have said the decontamination plan is still in an “embryonic” stage and that there are many details that sill need to be worked out, including how to make sure that no chlorine dioxide gas leaks from the building.  Any such leak would likely dissipate into the air and only cause burning eyes and a runny nose, according to experts (Steve Twomey, Washington Post, March 26).

Koplan Defends CDC

Meanwhile, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Jeffrey Koplan yesterday defended the way his agency handled the onset of last fall’s anthrax attacks (see GSN, Feb. 22).

At the start of the outbreak, government officials were criticized for poor communication with physicians and the public.  Federal officials, such as Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, were attacked for giving out information some believed would have been better coming from medical professionals, according to the New York Times.

Today, “we’re all agreed that it’s worthwhile early on to have a public health professional talking to the press,” about bioterrorism issues, said Koplan, who announced his resignation from the CDC last month.

Koplan also disputed rumors that he threatened to resign as CDC director at the beginning of the anthrax attacks unless the CDC was allowed to talk publicly.

“That is absolutely untrue,” Koplan said, adding that to have quit “in the midst of the anthrax attack would have been both unprofessional, unpatriotic and inappropriate.”

Some critics have complained that the CDC is not used to the harsh and brutal tone of politics in Washington, the Times reported.  The agency should be above such issues, Koplan said.

“What’s most important in an investigation of an outbreak like this is not the rough and tumble of Washington politics but the rough and tumble of dealing with a dangerous infectious agent when loose in the field, and that is were we apply our attention,” Koplan said.  “That is the wrestling match I prefer for us to get into, not Washington politics.  Let those up there dwell with that” (Lawrence Altman, New York Times, March 26).

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