Washington, DC, Veterans Center Tests For Anthrax.(Brief Article)

2001 NOV 21 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A mail room in the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Washington, DC, tested positive for trace amounts of anthrax. Authorities were set to order the release of powerful chemicals in a Senate office building in hopes of killing any lingering anthrax spores.

One month after the first anthrax case was confirmed, President Bush on called the anthrax threat "a second wave of terrorist attacks upon our country.'' He said in his weekly radio address that the government is working to swiftly test post offices and other sites for spores.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the presence of anthrax at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center on November 3, 2001, said Veterans Affairs spokesman Phil Budahn. Five mail room employees had already been taking antibiotics since October 25, as a precaution.

Budahn said the center's 250 patients would be closely monitored, but it was extremely unlikely that the anthrax had spread beyond the mail room, which closed for cleaning.

"No one is ill,'' Budahn said. "There's no indications that patients or other staff came in contact with hazardous material. This is purely a mail room issue.''

The medical center received mail from Brentwood, a Washington postal center that processed an anthrax-laced envelope delivered to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office.

On Capitol Hill, environmental experts planned to announce November 4, 2001, their plans for decontaminating the Hart Senate Office Building, where the letter to Daschle was opened. They planned to fill the nine-story building with bacteria-killing chlorine dioxide gas, but the final approval was being left to a panel of experts.