State resources suffering from anthrax scares

Unnecessary calls to hazardous materials crews are taxing the state's resources. Bloomington Township Fire Chief Faron Livingston said each response to an anthrax scare costs the town between $700 and $1,000. This includes the costs of calling in off-duty workers, paying workers for overtime and the cost of necessary equipment that can be used only once and thrown away.\nThe Bloomington Township Fire Department has responded to 10 calls since Oct. 15, Livingston said. \nPresident George W. Bush's officials and state health officials around the nation have been trying to quell intense public concern about anthrax. \n"Instead of speculating," Tom Ridge, Director of Homeland Security, told The New York Times Thursday morning, "We'd like to focus on the facts." \nRidge emphasized that at the time of the article's publication, only six cases of infection were confirmed while "thousands and thousands of people" have been tested and thousands of environmental samples have been taken. \nIt is easy to make people fear anthrax. But anthrax has never been used in biological warfare. To be an effective weapon, anthrax must be aerosolized into very small particles and inhaled in large quantities, a process that is difficult said George Hegeman, IU professor of microbiology. \n"It would require extensive knowledge of medical biology, industrial biology, and microbiology," Hegeman said. \nTo use anthrax in a dangerous way, a person would first have to obtain a strain of anthrax that is toxigenic. Then that person would have to know what medium the spores grow in and the tricks to getting the spores to grow properly. And this person would have to do all of this without infecting him or herself, Hegeman said. \n"Terrorists would be more likely to look at places like the Super Bowl or Washington D.C. if they wanted to hurt a lot of people," Hegeman said. "The chances of anyone in Bloomington getting sick from anthrax are pretty darn low. Bloomington is not an ideal target for terrorists." \nTo process the anthrax spores into an aerosol would be extremely difficult, said Dr. Roger Innes, professor in IU's biology department. \n"The anthrax has to be in very fine particles, and the spores tend to clump together," he said. "You would need access to the tools and the knowledge to make the spores into fine powder, one that would remain airborne." \nArthur Aronson, professor of microbiology at Purdue University, said spores would have to be mixed with a special emulsifying agent to keep them from clumping. This methodology is something that very few people know about. \n"Not even I know how to do it," Aronson said.\nFinally, a very fine aerosol dispenser would have to be designed to dispense large quantities of breathable anthrax.\n"Something like a hairspray dispenser wouldn't do the job," Aronson said. \nThe most likely place from which a person could obtain anthrax bacterium is from an animal that has died of the disease. Anthrax is still fairly common among farm animals in Europe and Asia. \n"I haven't seen this mentioned in the media at all, but the truth is that it's not at all uncommon for people who live around farms to be exposed to anthrax," Hegeman said. \nExposure to any dose of anthrax, even a tiny non-lethal one, causes the body to produce antibodies. An anthrax test only looks for the presence of these antibodies, and when people test positive, it may not be because of a suspicious letter they opened.\nAronson said that some veterinary labs work with anthrax and that the U.S. Army definitely has it. The Soviet Union has been studying anthrax as well. \nHe also said that prior to five years ago there were no restrictions on the shipping of anthrax. Now control is very tight.\nBut emergency responders and labs must take every report of suspicious packages and powder seriously.