WASHINGTON (REUTERS) — Two men who worked at a postal facility that handles mail for the nation’s capital have died — likely after being infected with anthrax — and two more battled the dangerous inhaled form of the disease amid a deepening threat involving germ warfare attacks by mail, officials said on Monday.
The deaths of postal workers, who find themselves on the front line of an anthrax scare involving letters laced with powdery anthrax spores, followed mail attacks on U.S. media and government targets in the wake of the Sept. 11 hijacked plane assaults on the United States.
Health officials said they were awaiting the results of tests to confirm that the two men succumbed to anthrax.
“It is very clear that their symptoms are suspicious, and their deaths are likely due to anthrax,” U.S. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge told a White House news conference.
The two men, both residents of Prince George’s County, Md., worked at the Brentwood central mail facility in Washington, D.C., that handles mail for the city, including the U.S. Capitol.
Amid U.S. military operations in Afghanistan in retaliation for the Sept. 11 attacks, Ridge said the deaths of the postal workers demonstrate that there are two fronts in the U.S. campaign to eradicate terrorism.
“There’s a battlefield outside this country, and there’s a war and a battlefield inside this country,” Ridge added.
In a statement, Southern Maryland Hospital Center in Clinton, Md., outside Washington, said a 47-year-old male postal worker arrived on Monday morning at the hospital’s emergency room with flu-like symptoms and respiratory distress and died six hours later.
The hospital added that a blood test found the presence of bacteria “which is suggestive of anthrax.”
Officials said the other postal worker died on Sunday at Greater Southeast Community Hospital in Washington, adding that results from his blood tests also were suggestive of anthrax.
“It’s clear to us, like other symbols of American freedom and power, the mail and our employees have become a target of terrorists,” said U.S. Postmaster General John Potter.
If the deaths of the two postal workers are confirmed as being caused by anthrax, it would bring the total number of anthrax deaths in America this month to three. A supermarket tabloid photo editor, Bob Stevens, died in Florida from anthrax inhalation, the most deadly form of the bacterial infection.
It was unclear whether the postal workers who died or those who had anthrax inhalation had directly handled mail tainted with anthrax that was found in U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s office last week. Twenty-eight Senate staff members have tested positive for anthrax exposure.
The disease generally is confined to livestock, but it can be used as a biological weapon by exposing people to the bacteria’s spores.
TWO OTHERS INHALED ANTHRAX
Washington Department of Health chief Dr. Ivan Walks said two other postal employees were diagnosed with the inhalation form of anthrax. Inova Fairfax Hospital in Virginia, which is treating them, said both patients were in serious condition.
An additional nine people were being checked for anthrax, Walks said, but he added that he could not say how many of them were postal employees or how many were hospitalized.
“Both of those confirmed inhalation anthrax cases are Brentwood postal workers working in the back in the employee area of the Brentwood mail facility in Washington,” Walks said, speaking to reporters outside Washington’s D.C. General Hospital.
More than 2,200 postal workers from the large Brentwood facility and another postal center near Baltimore-Washington International Airport in Maryland were being tested for anthrax. Both centers were closed while environmental tests were conducted.
Deborah Willhite, U.S. Postal Service senior vice president, said postal workers are being advised to wear masks and gloves while handling mail to guard against anthrax infection.
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE DELAYED RESPONSE
Federal and local officials, as well as the Postal Service, faced questions about why they did not order anthrax testing for employees at the Brentwood facility until Sunday despite the fact that the letter delivered last Monday to Daschle’s office that contained anthrax bacterial spores had been processed at the center.
Ridge said authorities moved “as quickly as they could.”
Willhite said the Postal Service simply followed the advice of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in not immediately testing employees. Walks said the concern last week among health officials was about postal workers possibly contracting the less deadly skin-contact form of anthrax, rather than inhaling the bacteria.
Postal workers lined up outside D.C. General Hospital to be tested for anthrax and were given a course of antibiotics to take as a preventive measure.
“I have two children so I am very concerned that maybe it is in my clothes or my gloves and I might have taken it home to them,” said Cynthia Hudson, a mail carrier who picks up her mail from Brentwood. “You never know.”
She expressed surprise it had taken so long to test them, especially after the mass testing on Capitol Hill last week.
“When they tested people on Capitol Hill, they knew the mail came out of our station, and they should have tested us as well,” she said.
Another postal worker, Joann Whitfield, added: “I think they waited too long to get us tested. Bottom line — now two people are dead.”
U.S. lawmakers were set to return to work in the U.S. Capitol building on Tuesday, but House of Representatives and Senate office buildings will remain closed pending the final results of tests for anthrax contamination, police said.
