WASHINGTON - Two postal workers in the nation's capital are apparently dead of anthrax, and two more were hospitalized Monday with dangerous pulmonary anthrax infections, escalating bioterrorism's toll on America.
At least one of the two dead postal workers handled congressional mail.
Preliminary tests suggested anthrax as the cause of death, pending conclusive results.
"It is very clear that their symptoms are suspicious, and their deaths are likely caused by anthrax," said Tom Ridge, director of the federal Office of Homeland Security. U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher told CNN "it does seem highly probable that those two deaths were related to inhalational anthrax."
The newest cases shifted the bioterrorism scare to the nation's capital after a spate of cases had surfaced in Florida and New York City news media offices, and in a Trenton, N.J., postal facility. One Washington postal worker was diagnosed with a pulmonary anthrax infection Sunday, and a second on Monday. Both remain hospitalized in serious condition.
Health authorities in the District of Columbia are watching nine other people who are displaying symptoms consistent with anthrax infection, said Dr. Ivan Walks, the capital city's top health official. He said he did not know how many of the nine were postal workers or how many had been hospitalized.
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A trail of anthrax spores connects the postal centers to the Capitol building. A letter tainted with anthrax was found in the offices of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle last week, and 28 Capitol workers, including six police officers, have tested positive for exposure to anthrax, which doesn't guarantee they will contract the disease.
The letter to Daschle would have passed through the postal facility where the latest victims worked - the Brentwood mail processing center, which employs about 2,000 postal workers and is about 15 blocks north of the Capitol. Some 2,000 employees at the Brentwood facility and at an airmail-processing center near Baltimore/Washington International Airport are being tested.
Officials were still trying to understand how the workers became infected. To succumb to a pulmonary anthrax infection, a person would have to inhale thousands of anthrax spores. The Daschle letter was sealed, raising doubts that it was the only anthrax-tainted letter to pass through the Brentwood center.
"I don't think we can close the door on the question: Are there more packages?" said Michael Powers, a research associate at the Washington-based Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute.
Congress prepared to return to its regular business Tuesday after the Daschle letter prompted lawmakers to close congressional office buildings to allow crews to scour offices and the Capitol for traces of anthrax. Officials found evidence of anthrax spores in four Capitol locations. Congressional office buildings will remain closed Tuesday pending results from environmental tests.
Co-workers said Monday that one of the deceased workers, whom officials and colleagues identified as Thomas Morris, worked in a section of the Brentwood center that handled government mail. The Daschle letter likely would have passed through that work station.
Several postal workers from the Brentwood station complained Monday that they should have been tested last week, immediately after officials confirmed that the Daschle letter contained anthrax. Hundreds of Capitol Hill workers were tested last week and received antibiotics.
"They know where it came from and we are the only official mail section," said Brentwood postal clerk Phyllis West. "They should have been on this like white on rice."
"I'm very upset," said Carol Cunningham, a postal employee for 35 years. "We should have been tested."
At a White House news conference late Monday, Ridge and postal, city and federal health officials defended their decision not to test Brentwood employees sooner, saying they were "following the science."
Officials tested a postal substation office that gets mail from Brentwood, screens it and sorts it before it goes to the Capitol. Initially those tests were negative, but further test results over the weekend found anthrax in the substation.
"We were taking it one step at a time to determine what in fact we ought to be doing as far as tracing back, very systematically, following the science, and that's where we had been at that point," said Deputy Surgeon General Kenneth Moritsugu.
Knight Ridder Tribune
