N.J. Postal Employee Concerns Continue

TRENTON, N.J.: Postal employees at two Trenton-area offices are now being told to take antibiotics for 60 days as health officials fear a second worker may be infected with inhalation anthrax.

The employee is a woman who works at the Hamilton post office that handled three anthrax-contaminated letters sent to Washington and New York.

Health department officials say she was hospitalized after showing respiratory symptoms similar to anthrax infection. Tests have not been completed that would offer a diagnosis of anthrax, they said.

Another woman who handles mail at the facility is a suspected case of inhalation anthrax. She remains hospitalized in serious but stable condition. All postal employees in Hamilton and West Trenton were told Thursday to take antibiotics for 60 days. Health officials said they extended the period because a seven-day regimen prescribed earlier was running out. Another reason for the extension was that 19 of 59 samples the state took at Hamilton's mail center have tested positive for anthrax, officials said.

Health inspectors went back to the West Trenton branch post office Thursday to conduct more extensive vacuum testing for anthrax. Initial tests there were negative. Officials say it's possible that machinery at the Hamilton facility contaminated letters that later went to West Trenton.

Meanwhile, FBI agents continue working to discover the source of the anthrax, which they say could have been local. "That's the million-dollar question, was it manufactured or was it stolen," said Special Agent Sandra Carroll, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Newark office. "Tests are showing that it could be locally produced given the right circumstances."

The Hamilton office, which handles mail from 46 local post offices in central New Jersey, processed at least three anthrax-laced letters addressed to NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and the New York Post. The Brokaw and Post letters were postmarked Sept. 18; the Daschle letter was postmarked Oct. 9.

State officials believe the mail handler who may have inhalation anthrax may have been infected by the Daschle letter.

In addition to the woman who appears to have the inhalation form of the disease, three other postal employees apparently have been infected with the skin form of the disease. They are being treated with antibiotics.

Another 104 workers at a mail transfer facility in Carteret, where mail is loaded onto trucks, have been told to begin taking antibiotics for 10 days because the three anthrax-tainted letters may have passed through there.

Initially, officials believed mail moved through the facility in sealed containers, but investigators determined that was not always the case and decided to recommend 10-day antibiotic treatments while they perform further environmental tests.

The Hamilton post office has been closed since last Thursday. FBI agents have examined the facility as part of a criminal investigation. Anthrax spores were found in 14 of the 23 samples collected by the FBI and 19 of 59 samples taken by state health officials. None of the 22 samples taken from areas where customers or the public had access showed signs of anthrax.

Meanwhile, the state's decision to not test workers or equipment at the Monmouth Processing and Distribution Center in Eatontown has angered workers there. The employees are concerned about anthrax because their facility often handles mail for the Hamilton plant. The workers initially believed their site would be tested, then learned Thursday that would not happen.

State health officials said testing was not needed there or at the Kilmer General Mail Facility in Edison because there has been no evident threat of anthrax contamination.

Two postal workers in Washington have died, and anthrax was the cause of death. The inhaled form of the disease has been confirmed in two other Washington-area mail employees who remain hospitalized.

Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

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Author: 6 - ABC, Action News