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Anthrax Continues to Threaten U.S.
WASHINGTON, Oct 25 (News Agencies) - A worker at a postal facility handling mail for the State Department has tested positive for anthrax as Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge told reporters at the White House today that the anthrax contained in a letter mailed to Senate Democratic Majority Leader Tom Daschle was highly concentrated and pure and made "to be more easily absorbed" by its victims.
"An employee who works at our main mail handling facility has tested positive for anthrax," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, referring to the facility in Sterling, Virginia outside Washington.
"Where and how he was exposed is not known," Boucher added. "He is currently hospitalized and has been treated."
The announcement marked the first time the State Department had been affected by the anthrax scare since the first cases were uncovered in the southeastern U.S. state of Florida early this month.
The man who tested positive for anthrax was a contract employee at the Sterling facility, one of six State Department mail-sorting centers.
Boucher said the affected center, known as State Annex 32, has been closed, and that mail delivery to all department facilities had been suspended.
"We are beginning the testing of all employees at this facility," he noted, adding that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would inspect the sorting facility.
All State Department mail-handling employees were placed on the antibiotic ciprofloxacin as of Wednesday, Boucher told reporters.
The State Department was twice placed on alert in recent weeks following the discovery of suspect powder in mailrooms, but the substances were later found to be non-threatening.
Meanwhile, a small amount of anthrax spores were found in a fourth post office in south Florida, county health officials announced Thursday, insisting the discovery did not pose a health risk. The traces of anthrax were found earlier this week in a post office in Greenacres, near West Palm Beach, in an area of the facility that is not open to the public.
Tim O'Connor, a spokesman for the Palm Beach County health department, said subsequent tests revealed only "minuscule amounts of anthrax spores".
"There is no indication that these spores pose a health risk," O'Connor said.
Tiny spores were discovered last week in three post offices in the area.
Investigators believe that mail sent to tabloid publisher American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, where one worker died of inhalation anthrax and another was hospitalized for the same infection, passed through several area post offices.
O'Connor said postal workers who might have handled mail sent to AMI would be offered two weeks of antibiotics.
"It's their choice, the health department is not recommending it, because there is not a real risk" to postal employees, he said.
Ernesto Blanco, a 73-year-old mail worker at tabloid publisher American Media Inc., who contracted inhalation anthrax earlier this month, is recovering at home after more than two weeks in hospital.
Blanco, who was released from hospital late Tuesday, admitted that during his hospitalization, he thought many times to himself that he was "going to die at any moment."
But the graying man of Cuban descent told the Miami Herald on Thursday, "God has chosen me as a spokesman, to tell mankind that we don't have to be afraid."
"At least we have scored one point in this battle. And we know that this [anthrax] can be beaten," he added.
Blanco, known at AMI for never being sick, will continue to take antibiotics - he expects to make a full recovery and return to work.
He worked in the same Boca Raton building as Robert Stevens, who died of respiratory anthrax on October 5.
Stevens, 63, a photo editor for American Media's Sun tabloid, was the first known to have died from anthrax in the recent spate of cases.
So far, three people have died from anthrax infection - Stevens and two Washington postal workers. At least 10 others have been infected in the United States.
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