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Pentagon accidentally sent live anthrax to as many as nine labs, officials say Pentagon accidentally sent live anthrax to as many as nine states, officials say
(34 minutes later)
The Pentagon says it inadvertently shipped live anthrax spores to as many as nine laboratories and is investigating how that happened. The Pentagon has conceded it accidentally shipped a live bioweapon across nine states.
The labs were supposed to receive dead – or inactivated – anthrax samples for research use. In an extraordinary Wednesday admission, the Pentagon revealed what it called an “inadvertent transfer of samples containing live Bacillus anthracis,” or anthrax, took place at an unspecified time from a US defense department laboratory in Dugway, Utah.
Spokesman Colonel Steve Warren says the Pentagon is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to retrieve the samples. Nine unspecified states received samples of the bioweapon, which can be fatal if untreated.
He says the government has confirmed one shipment contained live spores and suspects eight others did, too. Warren says the government believes there are no risks to the public. Colonel Steve Warren, the acting Pentagon press secretary, told reporters on Wednesday that there was “no known risk to the general public,” and lab workers possibly exposed to the bioagent have not manifested any indications of infection.
The live spores were shipped from Dugway Proving Ground in Utah – a Defense Department facility – to government and commercial labs in Texas, Maryland, Wisconsin, Delaware, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, California and Virginia. Warren said the lab at Dugway was “working as part of a DoD effort to develop a field-based test to identify biological threats in the environment.”
Contact with anthrax spores can cause severe illness. The Pentagon is aiding with a Centers for Disease Control investigation, Warren said, and “out of an abundance of caution” stopped additional anthrax shipments from its stockpiles. Such shipments are supposed to involve only inactive or dead bioweapons samples.
Pentagon officials would not say more about when the shipment occurred, who was the official responsible nor how inadvertent it was, given that the shipment appeared from Warren’s account to be part of a bioweapon detection initiative.
ABC News reported the states receiving the anthrax from the defense department lab are California, Texas, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey and New York.
A representative for the Senate Armed Services Committee had not heard about the incident before Wednesday. While the Senate is in recess, committee staff would surely investigate the live anthrax transfer, the representative said.
Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that a facility in Georgia exposed staff to anthrax after conducting an experiment into the prospect for mass spectrometry providing “a faster way to detect anthrax compared to conventional methods.”
While it is unclear if the two incidents are related, the CDC placed a moratorium on facilities’ transfers of anthrax while it improved safety procedures.
A still-unresolved case from 2001 in which unknown people mailed anthrax around the country, including to prominent politicians, resulted in the deaths of five people.