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Anthrax I: USAMRIID Investigation Focuses on Scientist Who Discovered Spores The investigation into anthrax contamination outside a laboratory at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., is focusing on a scientist who conducted unauthorized testing, an Army official said Tuesday (see GSN, April 25). Investigators are trying to discover the “exact circumstances” that caused the USAMRIID scientist last week to test for and discover anthrax spores in a hallway outside an anthrax laboratory, inside a nearby office and on top of a locker in the men’s changing room, said USAMRIID commander Col. Edward Eitzen. It is uncommon for a scientist at the facility to search for anthrax outside the laboratories that are used for biological warfare research, Eitzen said. “I would not want to speculate on his motives for doing that,” Eitzen said, adding that the discovery of the spores was the first time in USAMRIID history that a dangerous microbe escaped a facility laboratory. One theory for the spread of the spores is that a laboratory worker carried an anthrax-contaminated towel from the laboratory, through the decontamination shower and into the men’s changing room, where he then placed it on top of a locker, said a source close to the USAMRIID investigation. Contamination outside of a facility laboratory is almost unknown, but it was “very strange” that spores would be found on top of a changing room locker, said a former USAMRIID scientist. “Somebody got sloppy,” he said (Steve Miller, Frederick News-Post, April 26).
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