Mail, anthrax-contaminated

October 18,2001 in conjunction with the U.S. Post Office, the FBI offered a reward of 1,000,000 for information leading to the arrest of the person who mailed letters contaminated with anthrax to media organizations and congressional officers. 

Direct contamination of food, water, or individuals is also possible but is difficult and not generally an efficient way to infect large numbers of people. However, a terrorist can be successful by harming small numbers of victims, as this can still cause large-scale fear, if not terror. The cyanide-contaminated Tylenol in 1982 (see Chapter 2) and mailed anthrax spores in 2001 are past examples of terrorist attacks that killed a small number of people but caused nationwide fear and disproportionately large economic losses. 

In 2001, the first case of intentional anthrax release in the USA occurred. In October and November of that year, 11 confirmed cases of inhalation anthrax and 11 confirmed or suspected cases of cutaneous anthrax were reported in postal workers and others who handled mail that had been deliberately contaminated with anthrax spores (Abalakin et al., 1990). These contaminated letters were mailed anonymously to several news media and Federal government offices. The letters contained handwritten threats as well as cryptic references to the terrorist attacks on September 11 of that year. The anthrax spores were analyzed and determined to be of the Ames variety, the strain which originated in the USA and had been acquired by Army research institutes for vaeeine development. 

The distribution of B. anthracis endospores in mailings through the US Postal Service in the fall of 2001 served to ignite public awareness concerning anthrax as a weapon of mass destruction. Deliberate contamination of the mail resulted in 22 cases of anthrax (11 inhalational and 11 cutaneous). These mailings led to five deaths among the inhalational anthrax cases and an enormous economic burden associated with decontamination. The media coverage and public fallout unveiled the deficiencies in our current risk assessment of anthrax. 

Also processed at the Trenton, NJ postal facility was a small number of letters sent to the Southern Connecticut Processing and Distribution Center in Wallingford, CT. Here letters arrived on October 11 that had been cross-contaminated with anthrax spores from the October 9 Daschle or Leahy envelops. Anthrax spores were found on mail-sorting equipment in Wallingford. One letter that went through the Wallingford distribution center was found in Seymour, nearby to Oxford where case 23 resided. Likely case 23 was infected via a similar cross-contaminated letter that came in contact with mail in the distribution center in Wallingford (not discovered) [212]. 

The anthrax attacks occurred over the course of several weeks b inning on September 18, 2001. The crime is suspected to be domestic and intended to frighten and raise public fear rather than kill large numbers of people. There were also occurrences of copycat letters being mailed. Contaminated sites were closed for cleanup ranging from three months to more than three and a half years. Estimated costs for decontamination of these sites were approximately 242.5 million. ... 

An year earlier, a covert event occurred in October 2001 when anthrax spores were sent through the mail exposing persons in the eastern USA to contaminated mail resulting in deaths, illnesses and identified exposures to Anthrax. Overt, aimounced events, in which persons are warned that an exposure has occurred, have taken place in the United States, although most of these were determined to have been hoaxes, that is, there were no true exposures to infectious agents. 

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