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Postmaster general says no guarantee mail is safe, risk of anthrax is small
Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2001
 
• Anthrax Primer
• Testing for Anthrax
• Anthrax: Quick Facts
By LAURAN NEERGAARD
AP Medical Writer

WASHINGTON – With cases of anthrax growing, the nation's postmaster general warned Americans Wednesday there are no guarantees the mail delivered to their homes is safe but he stressed that the risks to them are slim. The anthrax scare widened to include the White House.

"We're asking people to handle mail very carefully," Postmaster General John Potter told ABC's "Good Morning America." "People have to be aware of everything in their day-to-day life, and certainly, mail in our system is threatened right now.

"There are no guarantees that that mail is safe," he said.

Acknowledging that the public health system is being challenged in unprecedented ways, Surgeon General David Satcher told NBC's "Today": "I'm worried that we're being attacked and we don't understand the attack."

Asked about the particular risk to postal workers, Satcher said the government should consider vaccinating "anyone who works in a high-risk area."

Federal doctors are working around the clock to determine how many people with suspicious symptoms really have anthrax – in addition to 12 confirmed cases. Three people have died from the disease.

Three more people who had been in the "hot zone" at Washington's central postal facility were hospitalized overnight with flulike symptoms but anthrax infection had not been confirmed, said Mike Hall, a spokesman for Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Md.

President Bush declared the White House safe after workers at a mail processing center two miles away at Bolling Air Force Base discovered a small concentration of anthrax spores on machinery that sorts letters headed for the executive mansion.

Investigators say it is possible that some of the White House mail picked up a few spores – not enough to cause inhaled anthrax – as it went through a central Washington mail facility where two workers died from anthrax and at least two others have become seriously ill.

"I'm confident that when I come to work tomorrow, I'll be safe," Bush said Tuesday. "I don't have anthrax."

The disclosure came as the administration pledged more aggressive testing of the anthrax trail – and that antibiotics would be given at the first sign to anyone else, especially postal workers, who may have been exposed to anthrax-contaminated mail.

Postal facilities in Washington and New Jersey known to have processed one or more anthrax-tainted letters were closed after environmental testing found the germs lurking inside.

"We're going to err on the side of caution in making sure people are protected," Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said.

Potter was asked if mail could contaminate people at their homes, and said, "Theoretically it could, but it hasn't yet." He stressed that "the chances are very, very slim, but again, people should do things that are safe and when they handle mail they should wash their hands."

Potter said the Postal Service was working to provide new protection for its workers, including gloves and special masks. "We're going to start on the East Coast, where the threat is, and move through the rest of the country," he said on CNN.

At a northern Virginia hospital, the two seriously ill postal workers were stable and breathing on their own. That's a very good sign, their physician, Dr. Susan Matcha of Kaiser Permanente, told The Associated Press, saying she was cautiously optimistic.

Matcha was treating the two not only with the now-famous drug Cipro but with two additional medications – clindamycin and Rifampin – in hopes the extra treatment could better battle both the anthrax bacteria and the toxin those germs are pumping into the patients' bodies.

Investigators weren't close to identifying the anthrax attacker. But the FBI released the text of three anthrax-tainted letters that suggest a possible connection with the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings – because the letters bore that date.

"You can not stop us. We have this anthrax. You die now. Are you afraid? Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great," said the letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

Bush said, "We're working hard at finding out who's doing this."

The confirmed anthrax toll stood at 12, half the deadly inhaled form of anthrax and the other half the easily treatable skin form. A Florida tabloid photo editor and two Washington postal workers have died from the inhaled form.

Five more inhaled cases are suspected, including a New Jersey postal worker hospitalized near Trenton. The woman worked at a Trenton-area postal facility believed to have processed at least three anthrax-tainted letters – one sent to Daschle, the second to NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw and the third to the New York Post.

In addition to the three hospitalized overnight, four other people – at least three of them workers at Washington's Brentwood postal facility that also processed the Daschle letter – are hospitalized in suburban Maryland and are considered probable cases. But Washington health officials said suspicion was very low that an additional 12 people with vague symptoms actually had anthrax.

Angry postal workers and lawmakers asked why the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hadn't tested the Brentwood mail facility as soon as they knew the Daschle letter had passed through that building.

The deaths stunned CDC doctors, who ordered precautionary antibiotics for thousands of Washington postal workers and 7,000 employees of six New York City post offices that may have handled anthrax-tainted letters sent to news organizations. Those workers were to take the drugs until CDC could prove whether anthrax was in any of those mail facilities.

But testing of other post offices that had handled contaminated mail had turned up only trace amounts of anthrax.

"We're learning. ... The people who are doing this are doing it in a way we don't have experience with," said an emotional CDC Deputy Director David Fleming.
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