Two US Army facilities mistakenly shipped suspected live anthrax samples to labs in nine states for over a year, a US official says.
The official said the Dugway Proving Ground had reported, apparently erroneously, the inactivation of the anthrax stock in question following its treatment with gamma irradiation. The samples originated at Dugway, but were also later shipped from Edgewood to US federal, private and academic facilities.
The Pentagon today confirmed that the Utah facility sent anthrax to private labs in nine states and a US military base in South Korea.
It said there was no known suspected infection or risk to the public.
However, four US civilians have been started on preventive measures called post-exposure prophylaxis, which usually includes the anthrax vaccine, antibiotics, or both.
They face "minimal" risk, said Jason McDonald, a spokesman for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They were "doing procedures that sent the agent into the air," he said.
The US military said today that 22 personnel at the Korea base had possibly been exposed.
Last Friday, the Maryland laboratory alerted CDC that it had a live sample; by midday on Saturday all nine laboratories were notified, the official said.
DEADLY ILLNESS
When anthrax becomes airborne, it can cause a deadly illness called inhalation anthrax. That is what happened in 2001, when it was sent through the US mail to government and media targets, killing five people.
The anthrax sent from the Utah military lab was meant to be shipped in an inactive state as part of efforts to develop a field-based test to identify biological threats, the Pentagon said today.
"Out of an abundance of caution, (the Defence Department) has stopped the shipment of this material from its labs pending completion of the investigation," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said.
The CDC said it has launched an investigation of the mishap.
"All samples involved in the investigation will be securely transferred to CDC" or affiliated labs "for further testing," said spokeswoman Kathy Harden. It has sent officials to the labs "to conduct on-site investigations."
The mishap comes 11 months after CDC, one of the government's top civilian labs, similarly mishandled anthrax.
Researchers at a lab designed to handle extremely dangerous pathogens sent what they believed were killed samples of anthrax to another CDC lab, one with fewer safeguards and therefore not authorised to work with live anthrax.
Scores of CDC employees were potentially exposed to the live anthrax, but none became ill.
That incident and a similar one last spring, in which CDC scientists shipped what they thought was a benign form of bird flu but which was actually a highly virulent strain, led US lawmakers to fault a "dangerous pattern" of safety lapses at government labs.
