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15 Feb ’12
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Officials say there is no risk to the public
The Pentagon acknowledged Wednesday that samples of live anthrax were unintentionally mailed to labs in nine states and South Korea, as officials had believed that the samples were dead.
Col. Steve Warren, the Pentagon’s acting press secretary, told reporters there were no suspected or confirmed cases of infection and no risk to the public, according to ABC News. Anthrax can cause severe illness and even death among people who come in contact with it; dead anthrax samples can be used for research.
The samples were apparently shipped from Dugway Proving Ground in Utah on April 30 to a military lab in Maryland, then distributed to labs in nine states. After a lab in Maryland found out their package included live samples, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was alerted.
The CDC and the Department of Defense are working together to investigate the matter.
http://time.com/3899.....-accident/
meanwhile, in South Korea
After the Pentagon said Wednesday that an Army laboratory inadvertently distributed live samples of anthrax, a U.S. Air Force base in South Korea said that 22 personnel “may have been exposed.”
“Twenty-two personnel may have been exposed during the training event and all personnel were provided appropriate medical precautionary measures to include examinations, antibiotics and in some instances, vaccinations,” a statement from Osan Air Base said. “None of the personnel have shown any signs of possible exposure.
15 Feb ’12
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up to 51 locations now
The Pentagon now believes that at least 51 labs in 17 states, the District of Columbia and three countries may have mistakenly received live anthrax from U.S. military stocks.
Senior Pentagon officials expect the numbers to increase as additional testing of anthrax lots continues and stress that there is no risk to the general public because the concentrations of anthrax involved are too low to affect an average person.
“We expect this number may rise because the scope of the investigation is going on and we will update these numbers daily until all of the investigation is complete,” Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said at a Pentagon briefing.
Work said 400 lots of irradiated anthrax stored at four U.S. military facilities are being tested to see whether they contain any live anthrax. Four of those lots, from the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, have been found to contain a mix of live and inactivated anthrax.
4 Mar ’12
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makes you wonder, doesnt it?
18 Feb ’12
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It's probably nothing more than carelessness.
Investigation reveals 100s of mishaps in US high-containment labs
An investigation into more than 200 high-containment labs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia by a team of reports for USA Today Network of Gannett newspapers and TV stations revealed hundreds of lab accidents, safety violations, and "near misses," USA Today noted today in a lengthy report.
http://www.cidrap.um.....ay-29-2015
The Soviet Union had the most appalling record of lab mishaps, but as of late, US labs have gotten scary. One thing you have to remember, a large number of US biocontainment labs are run by universities. The same grad students that are rock and rolling all night and partying every day are participating in our dangerous microbe research. I did an internship at a Biosafety Level 4 lab which was a jointly held gov't and privately owned lab, and biocontainment is tedious. After years of working in labs, it would be easy to skip or hurry steps, make bookkeeping errors, etc.
I wonder if this huge problem with anthrax will cause US labs to be more vigilant or if things will calm down and go back to normal.
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