posted on October 22, 2001 10:56:36 AM new
Well, even though I know way more about Anthrax that I ever would have imagined, I can't seem to find the answer to the following question.
If a letter/package is contaminated with anthrax (inside & outside the package) and that letter/package is run thru the US Postal system (or any system for that matter) can the machines used and other letters/packages that come in contact with contaminated letter/package become contaiminated?
posted on October 22, 2001 11:18:27 AM new
I'm guessing that if there was a significant threat we would be told about it and given suggestions as to what precautions to take.
I've thought about the same thing but I think that the risk of contamination would be small. It takes a lot of spores to make you sick or so I have heard.
[ edited by outoftheblue on Oct 22, 2001 11:19 AM ]
posted on October 22, 2001 11:32:32 AM new
I dunno. Some Russian biological warfare expert living in the U.S. briefed a Congressional commitee and he told them ironing does the trick.
posted on October 22, 2001 11:33:38 AM new
Gee rancher, I thought you couldn't catch anthrax without multiple spores (thousands). That's why people have showed up as coming in contact with it and not catching it (I think???).
posted on October 22, 2001 11:38:17 AM new
I dunno James, you would think that much heat would kill this bacteria. But then think about the people that ate anthrax infected sheep, that they cooked, long ago, and they still contracted it.
posted on October 22, 2001 11:41:03 AM new
I hate ironing!...But I suppose I could install an ultraviolet light in my mailbox.....I understand that bleach, even diluted bleach, with also do the trick, but I don't think that's gonna be very effective on my incoming mail.
Kraftdinner, I believe that thousands of spores are necessary to infect via inhalation, however, considerably less need for contact infection.
posted on October 22, 2001 11:42:14 AM newI'm guessing that if there was a significant threat we would be told about it and given suggestions as to what precautions to take.
They have been telling the public what to do. They're telling us to put suspect letter in a plastic bag and call the authorities.
Post office workers (in some areas) are also wearing masks, besides gloves.
posted on October 22, 2001 11:42:32 AM new
"How is anthrax transmitted?
Anthrax infection can occur in three forms: cutaneous (skin), inhalation, and gastrointestinal. B. anthracis spores can live in the soil for many years, and humans can become infected with anthrax by handling products from infected animals or by inhaling anthrax spores from contaminated animal products. Anthrax can also be spread by eating undercooked meat from infected animals. It is rare to find infected animals in the United States."
posted on October 22, 2001 11:43:34 AM new
I thought anthrax could survive almost anything except U/V light which breaks down the cell walls. Heat and cold have little effect I thought. (???)
posted on October 22, 2001 11:47:53 AM new
that statement I copied says you could get gastrointestional version of Anthrax by eating "UNDERCOOKED" infected meat.
Seems logical to think then that heat of some sort kills the spores
posted on October 22, 2001 11:52:33 AM new
Linda_K They have been telling the public what to do. They're telling us to put suspect letter in a plastic bag and call the authorities. well, that advice works if you are a direct target (eg. letter/package actually contains anthrax) BUT if the envelope containing my eBay payment just happened upon a contaminated letter during it's journey to me, I wouldn't think it suspect at all....
Femme....Nope, I don't mind...I believe I had heard that the first case (the photo editor who passed) was farsighted and therefore held the letter very close to his face to read it...The others, I'm not sure...
Yes, it can contaminate machines, and vehicles and anything else it contacts. The mail processing machines can cause it to escape from an envelope because they squeeze, roll, convey, and mechanically sort mail.
The only way to be safe personally is to have someone else open your mail, or bag it and call them if it has any of the characteristics mentioned.
posted on October 22, 2001 12:06:33 PM new
Hi Rancher - It doesn't have to be a letter/pkg sent to you directly. If it has passed through a PO, like the one in NJ, where several of their stations were tested anthrax positive, and your ebay payment went through that PO, it could have been contaminated. Likely wouldn't be, but could be. That's why they're shutting down a lot of different WA DC offices, a PO, and a police station to decontaminate them.
The odds of it happening are extremely low...but it can happen. I personally don't feel as threatened by the skin anthrex as I am by people who are exposed to the inhalation one. Think we have four dead from it as of today, and about 13 being watched. When you compare that to 280,000,000 people...the odds are low.
posted on October 22, 2001 12:12:42 PM new
Yeah, what Rancher said... if a regular envelope happened upon a contaminated envelope during transit, it wouldn't be a "suspect" letter.
Makes me want to start using online bill payment.
I don't think any means of death would make me angrier than dying because of the religious/political agenda of a group of Islamic nuts. If I were in the military on active duty, well, that would be different. But as a private citizen, to contract anthrax? I would want to rip the perpetrators apart and take them with me.
posted on October 22, 2001 12:44:08 PM new"The only way to be safe personally is to have someone else open your mail" My 17 year old is currently unemployed, maybe he'd be able to get a few jobs...I'm pretty sure he's had experience with white powder!
You might know this...is the post office yanking mail right from the system that they think is suspicious (according to the list of suspicious characteristics), even before it get's to the recipient, or are they letting the recipient make the determination?
Also, understand that it takes a fair ammount of Anthrax Spores to become infected...I think between 5,000 - 10,000 spores to be fully contaminated. A letter that has "rubbed-off" from an infected letter is about as likely to infect you as a Mosquito biting you with Dengue Fever or Malaria.
:\\\\\\\"Crystalline Sliver cannot be the target of spells or abilities.
posted on October 23, 2001 03:16:51 PM new
Here is some Anthrax info- a little long but worth the time- pay close attention to Item 16.
A physician in private practice in Freeport, Maine, Meryl Nass has worked in
the field of anthrax and bioterrorism for the past thirteen years. She was
the first person to investigate an anthrax epidemic (in Rhodesia during its
civil war) and prove that it was due to biowarfare. She has written and
spoken widely on investigating epidemics, ways of preventing bioterrorism
and, for the past 4 years, has been very active in bringing problems
associated with human anthrax vaccine to the public's attention. She has
testified before two Congressional committees and two committees of the
National Academy of Sciences. She has been seen in the past month fielding
anthrax questions on Tom Brokaw, CNN, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and FOX
News.
Issues that need to be addressed regarding the bioterrorism response include
the following:
1. Are the anthrax-containing envelopes an initial tease, or warning?
They are a good way to disseminate small quantities, while avoiding
identification of the sender. But what may be ahead? Spores in
ventilation systems? Spores at sports events or where there are dense
population concentrations? Thousands or millions of letters containing
anthrax? How will we know in time, and how will we decontaminate
ventilation systems, electronics, sports arenas, soil, etc.?
2. At the present time, public health authorities have continued to use
(primarily cutaneous) human anthrax cases as the harbingers of anthrax
dissemination. Cutaneous infections require many fewer spores to induce
illness, compared to inhalation anthrax. The infected individuals are
serving as the "canaries in the mineshaft" who warn that anthrax is
present. If the extent of spore dissemination increases (higher
concentrations in ambient air from envelopes, or through other means)
then the inhalation cases will serve as the canaries, and there will be
many fatalities.
3. I will continue to harp on the need for accurate and rapid sampling
of the environment as the most important (by far) technology needed to
deal with the offensive use of anthrax. There are likely to be many
more envelopes that have already dispersed anthrax spores, but have not
been identified yet, because there have (so far) been no cases of
illness related to those envelopes, and spores were not seen by the
person(s) handling the mail. This means that anthrax spores may be
contaminating a number of environments in which they have not been
detected. We may not see cases until small animals, children, or people
with immune system impairment become exposed in those environments.
4. Only by identifying an environment contaminated with anthrax before
illness appears are we likely to effectively treat inhalation cases.
5. Only by identifying these environments can we remove people from the
environment and protect them from further exposure.
6. It is possible that we will not be able to do a complete clean up of
contaminated environments, for the time being. There has not been a
great deal of research into how to clean up homes and offices, for
example. Gruinard Island, off the coast of Scotland, was
decontaminated 45 years after it was used as a test area for anthrax
during World War II. During those 45 years, humans and animals were
barred from the island. Ten acres were decontaminated: this required
defoliating the area, using 200 tons of 37% formaldehyde, diluted in
seawater, that was sprayed over the area, and then additional
formaldehyde was re-sprayed after deep soil sampling revealed persistent
organisms.
7. What else works to kill anthrax spores, which can remain viable for
decades or hundreds or years? Bleach, which must be in contact with
spores for at least 2 minutes. Paraformaldehyde gas, glutaraldehyde,
hydrogen peroxide and peracetic acid also work, and need to be in
contact with spores for at least as long. But these materials can be
corrosive and are not appropriate for homes and offices, though they can
be used to decontaminate most laboratories. Spores can be boiled; the
standard recommendation has been to keep the water at a rolling boil at
least 10 minutes to kill spores of any pathogen. Steam also kills
spores in from 1 to 10 minutes. In goat hair mills, the goat hair was
treated at 170 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes, but many spores
retained their viability after this treatment. Moist heat works much
better than dry heat. Fumigation can be performed with ethylene or
propylene oxides, or paraformaldehyde gas.
8. I hope you can tell from this that I do not know a completely safe
and effective way to perform decontamination. This needs to be an area
of intensive investigation now. Dr. Alibek has suggested that methods
used for decontamination in Sverdlovsk in 1979 (washing trees and
houses, and paving dirt roads), may have re-aerosolized anthrax spores,
and that this may have increased the number of cases of inhalation
anthrax.
9. Dr. Ken Alibek suggested steam ironing letters before opening, which
sounds like a good idea. Put a cloth between the iron and the letter.
We need to know more about the temperature setting and how long the iron
needs to be in contact with the letter.
10. The bottom line is that spores are odorless, tasteless, and
invisible, individually. In a worst case scenario, up to one trillion
spores (1,000,000,000,000) might be present in one gram of material.
One gram can be contained easily within a one-ounce (28 gram) letter.
It theoretically could contain a million lethal doses, if the majority
of the spores were viable, of the right size, and dispersed easily
without clumping.
11. What is a lethal dose of spores? The reason why you may read a
variety of different estimates for this number is because a) there are
no human-derived data, and b) there are a variety of factors that impact
the answer. There are many animal experiments, and those results are
surprising at times. It also depends on the virulence of the anthrax
strain used, the amount of air you inhale (during exercise, you breathe
in several times as much air as you do at rest), the % of viable spores,
the distribution of size of spores, whether the spores easily separate
from each other, and your own inherent immune system function. Thus the
number might range from 10,000 spores to many millions. Animal tests of
a sample from a letter should give us a rough idea of how virulent the
potion is, and what a lethal dose might be.
12. Here are some animal data for lethal doses (LD50) of anthrax spores
by subcutaneous injection and inhalation (from JM Barnes). This shows
why there are so many cutaneous cases, compared to inhalation cases.
13. Another experiment in pigs: each of 50 pigs was fed from 10 million
to 10 billion Ames strain spores (C Redmond et al.) Only 2 of the pigs
died (4% of the total) and two others had anthrax isolated from blood,
but survived. By 21 days after feeding the spores, the majority of pigs
had developed antibodies to anthrax, indicating that they became
infected and recovered. Humans, like pigs, are probably relatively
resistant to anthrax, compared to many other species.
14. How do we know antiserum is likely to be protective? Mice, which
are notoriously hard to protect against anthrax with vaccines, were
given antiserum and then exposed to anthrax. The survival of mice given
two different antisera was 80% at two weeks post exposure for both
groups, while those given control sera had a 0% or 10% survival rate (RJ
Beedham et al).
15. It remains very important to keep one's exposure to anthrax spores
to a minimum, particularly if you work in a high risk industry, such as
the postal service, UPS, Fedex, media or politics. Although I earlier
advised against gas masks, I have come to believe there is a role for
appropriate, well-fitted masks that have demonstrated efficacy in
preventing inhalation of particles of the 0.5 to 5.0 micron size. My
hope is that once environmental sensors are used widely, we will be able
to discard masks. For now, if you feel there has been an exposure, or
if you are trying to avoid exposure at a high risk occupation, HEPA dust
masks (such as 3M Corp has sold for tuberculosis prophylaxis) may be
useful. The more HEPA sheets in the mask, the better it will filter.
These masks have not been tested for anthrax or other bioterrorism
exposures, so 3M cannot market them for this purpose. However, such
masks ought to keep out 95-99% of particles in the desired size range,
and could be used for "high risk" activities such as opening mail.
Gloves would also decrease one's exposure to spores, but must be
discarded after use, or washed after use in order to reuse them.
16. Again, let me emphasize that a variety of soaps and detergents have
been tested and were found to increase spore virulence by up to a factor
of 16. That means the spores could be made 16 times as virulent,
because soaps may make them easier to disperse as individual particles.
For now, wash only in water first to remove spores; you can then use
soap when the spores are down the drain.
17. There are many methodologies for identifying spores in the
environment. I have collected a large number of articles on this
subject, and will discuss what looks promising, and the differences
between the methods, in a subsequent update. I continue to believe that
PCR testing, because of its sensitivity and rapidity, should be the
initial test done, with the understanding that some false positives will
result, but no anthrax exposures will be missed, as long as sampling is
adequate. I have spoken at length to Tom O'Brien of Tetracore, in
Gaithersburg, MD. His company has some very promising PCR and
immunoassays for anthrax that can be completed in under 12 hours, and
can detect as few as 100 cfu (viable spores) per milliliter of material.
18. Diagnosing exposure in people is not that easy. Although obtaining
nasal swabs is a simple procedure to perform, one study shows that the
spores rapidly disappear from the nose after exposure, suggesting that
swabs are only likely to be positive within 24 hours of contact. Thus
sensitivity may be very low, and swabs will give you many false negative
results.
19. Treatment is another question. I have suggested that many other
antibiotics are as good or better than ciprofloxacin. Doxycycline, for
instance, will also work for plague, tularemia and brucella, and
effectiveness for all these other potential biowarfare pathogens has not
been established for cipro.
20. The duration of antibiotic treatment needed remains uncertain. It
is not clear if those currently being treated are being helped by
antibiotics, or would not have become ill anyway. Antibody titers will
tell if you successfully fought off anthrax. Although CDC Deputy
Director David Fleming said that a four-fold rise in antibody titer is
needed to confirm recent anthrax infection, this is not necessarily the
case. Because anthrax is so rare, one positive antibody titer (by
ELISA) should be adequate to make the diagnosis, as long as the ELISA
test is accurate.
21. A pathologist called me today regarding an autopsy of a possible
anthrax case. Autopsies can be a problem; in animals, when the animal
is opened, spores form and are released. This could contaminate the
autopsy suite. There may be temperatures in which this does not occur,
but I don't know that for sure. I recommended instead, that blood, CSF
and mediastinal fluid be sampled for the presence of the relatively
unique-appearing gram positive fat rods of anthrax. This might save you
from having to do a whole autopsy.
22. How to protect pets? The animal vaccine works quite well though it
may require yearly boosters (there is little data on how frequently they
must be given).
23. I guess my take home message is that, unlike other pathogens, which
live in the environment for minutes to, at most, days, these spores last
nearly forever. Contamination does not resolve with time, although if
spores are kicked up inside buildings, they may disperse to less
infectious levels. Outdoors, the spores tend to stick to the soil
components and do not easily re-aerosolize. However, that may not be
the case for indoor spore accumulations. First responders, affected
workers, and others who may be in the vicinity of an anthrax event
should behave as if there are invisible, potentially lethal spores
everywhere: on surfaces, floors, your computer and desk, your person,
walls and ceilings. This requires an entirely new mindset for dealing
with infectious emergencies.
posted on October 23, 2001 03:25:41 PM new
The best way for me to deal with this Anthrax thing is to make whoopie with my Pharmacist (who has all the Cipro). Woo-hoo!!!
posted on October 23, 2001 06:01:29 PM new
Reamond - Thanks for that informative post. We watched a doctor from John Hopkins University last night on Fox News. She too, was very knowledgeable on anthrax. She gave some of the same information you've shared here, but it wasn't as detailed.
News tonight said that Hawaii may now have a case of anthrex also. Still being checked into.
