3 million spores in the Wallingford PO was termed a trace amount

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http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/hc-anthrax0405.artapr05.story

More Anthrax Tests Planned

April 5, 2002

By DAVE ALTIMARI Courant Staff Writer

In what is being called a precautionary measure, state

health officials said Thursday they plan to retest the

regional postal facility in Wallingford for traces of

anthrax,

months after it was declared safe for employees.

The move comes a week after a top state health official

surprised some postal workers with the revelation, made

during a presentation at the federal Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention in Atlanta, that testing last year

had

turned up 3 million anthrax spores at the facility. Several

postal employees said they had been told only trace

amounts of anthrax were found on four of 16 sorting

machines.

The health official, Dr. Hadler, chief of infectious

diseases at the Department of Public Health, said

Thursday that 3 million spores isn't a large amount when

compared with the billions of spores contained in the

letters mailed to Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and

Leahy, D-Vt., last October. The post offices in New Jersey

and Washington that processed those letters are still

closed.

" Three million sounds like a large number, and certainly if

you put it into the air you have the potential to

significantly

expose a large number of people, " Hadler said. " The

biggest risk for postal employees was when the

contaminated mail first came into the facility, but it could

pose a risk again if some anthrax were re-aerosolized. "

Hadler said the 3 million spores were found underneath a

sorting machine last fall. The new tests will concentrate

on air ducts and ceiling surfaces, where anthrax spores

could collect in dust and risk being stirred into the air.

" It's possible there are deposits of spores in places

where they aren't doing any harm right now, because no

one has gotten sick, and we don't want to put them in the

air, " he said.

Hadler was the health department's lead investigator into

the death of Ottilie Lundgren, the 94-year-old Oxford

woman who died of inhalation anthrax in November.

Investigators believe she inhaled anthrax spores, perhaps

by ripping up junk mail that had passed through the

Wallingford facility, although extensive testing of her home

found no traces of the deadly bacteria.

Lundgren's death forced scientists to conclude that

inhalation anthrax could be contracted by exposure to far

fewer than the 8,000 to 10,000 spores once thought to be

the minimum required.

Some post office workers in Wallingford have questioned

whether postal officials have deliberately downplayed the

lingering threat of anthrax. The precautionary regimen of

antibiotics, which they began after Lundgren's death,

ended last month, prompting renewed worries about

potential exposure to spores that could have been

overlooked in prior testing.

Postal service spokesman Jim Cari said the facility was

declared by health officials to be safe in December.

" We have been working with the health department and

the CDC to do follow-up testing, and later this month we

will begin, " Cari said.

The Wallingford facility was first tested for anthrax on

Nov.

11, as part of a routine check of large postal facilities

across the country. At that time, only dry cotton-swab

samples were taken, and nothing was found.

The facility was tested again Nov. 21, this time using dry

and wet swabs, after it became known that Lundgren had

contracted inhalation anthrax. Still, tests turned up

nothing. A third similar round of tests Nov. 25 also came

back negative.

The most thorough testing of the Wallingford facility was

done after investigators, working off computerized records

at the New Jersey end of the mail route, tracked an

anthrax-tainted letter to the home of Farkas in

Seymour - only 3 miles from Lundgren's home.

On Nov. 28, CDC investigators used special vacuums to

do by far the most extensive testing of the facility. It was

that test that produced positive results for anthrax on the

four sorting machines, including the high concentration

found beneath one machine.

Postal officials closed the four tainted machines, covered

them in tents and sprayed a bleach mist into each one to

decontaminate them. Since then, the machines have

tested negative for anthrax.

But most of the testing was done either on the sorting

machines or the floors surrounding them, not above,

Hadler said, prompting the current emphasis on testing

ceilings and air ducts.