http://ww2.pstripes.osd.mil/01/oct01/ed101601a.html
Expert picks apart government's
handling of anthrax investigations
By Carlos Bongioanni <mailto:bongioannic at pstripes.osd.mil> , Stars and Stripes
One anthrax expert says government officials searching anthrax-exposed facilities "don't know what the hell they're doing."
"Every day that goes by, I'm getting more and more aggravated with the investigations," said Dr. Meryl Nass, an anthrax expert who has spent more than 20 years researching the deadly bacteria.
When the first anthrax case came to light in Florida two weeks ago, authorities should have closed down the entire building, said Nass. Instead, she noted, authorities let employees return to work for more than a week before closing the building.
That was absurd, she said.
"When the media first reported to us that agents found spores only on the keyboard" at the desk of the American Media employee who died "and no place else, that immediately told me that these people investigating these cases don't know what the hell they're doing," she said.
"It takes an awful lot of spores to make someone sick. If that person died from inhaled anthrax, that tells me there was a hell of a lot of spores that dissipated into the air."
Five other employees at the American Media building in Florida tested positive Saturday for anthrax, Nass noted. That means they, too, inhaled enough anthrax to cause their immune system to fight off the bacteria.
"I think the five others got a good whiff," she said. "They won't die. But their case only confirms that a lot of bacteria got into their systems and into the air."
Nearby employees could have picked up enough bacteria on their clothes and shoes to take home and infect their entire families, she said.
The way authorities handled NBC's anthrax case is equally outrageous, she said. FBI agents had the letter that went to Tom Brokaw's office for two weeks before anything was done with it, she said.
The government needs to focus on sampling and re-sampling the floor and air inside the buildings that have been affected, as well as soil samples outside the buildings, she said. The government needs to decentralize their effort and get biosensor-sampling kits out to health authorities at the local level across the country.
The last inhaled anthrax case in the United States was in 1976. Since then there have been about three or four cases per year of the much-less-threatening skin anthrax exposure, she added.
Because of the infrequency of anthrax cases in the States, Nass said there are very few professionals who understand how to deal with it.
Only 50 to 100 people worldwide understand anthrax well, said Nass, and "the people making decisions need to pull them out of the woodwork and get them working on the investigations."
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