New York woman ill with apparent anthrax

By Paul Recer

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – A New York woman believed suffering from anthrax struggled for her life today, triggering fresh concerns that the disease was spreading beyond known connections to the postal service and the news media.

The woman worked in a medical clinic and was not directly involved in mail distribution. New York Health Commissioner Neal Cohen said other hospitals in the city were alerted “to take precautions … and share their findings with us.”

New York officials spoke as Postmaster General John Potter disclosed that paper contained in an anthrax-tainted letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was more porous than the paper inside two other letters known to have been spiked.

“I think there was a different type of paper,” he told a Senate committee. That “allowed the anthrax to move through the paper,” he said. “That’s my assumption, I don’t consider myself an expert but that appears to be the case.

All three letters were dated Sept. 11, the day hijackers killed an estimated 5,000 in terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. But the letters to NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw and the New York Post bore postmarks of Sept. 18, while the mail to Daschle was postmarked Oct. 9.

The Daschle letter has spread contamination from the main postal facility in the nation’s capital throughout the city, affecting more than one dozen federal facilities and forcing the closure of yet another post office earlier today.

Dr. Steven Ostroff of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the case of the seriously ill New York woman was troubling because it is the first New York case of inhalation anthrax without a clear connection with the mails.

In New Jersey, officials confirmed that a 51-year-old Hamilton Township woman not linked to the postal service was suffering from the skin form of anthrax. The source of the infection also was unknown, but officials said it could have come from contact with a piece of mail. The woman is the 15th person diagnosed with anthrax since the mail attacks began.

The new New York City case “does appear to be different from the previous cases,” Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” He said the FBI and health officials are investigating where the woman lived and worked to try to identify where she was exposed to the bacteria.

Ridge insisted the mail is safe “by and large.”

The circle of anthrax contamination widened as new traces of anthrax spores were found in the Capitol Police office of the Ford House building, which was already closed because of positive tests in its mail room. Anthrax also was confirmed late Monday in a downtown Agriculture Department office mailroom and technicians were considering a plan to pump a fumigating gas into the shuttered Hart Senate Office Building to kill any lingering anthrax spores there.

In Washington, officials closed the Friendship Heights post office after anthrax spores were found. Postal workers there were advised to start antibiotic therapy.

FBI officials, meanwhile, issued a broad new terrorism warning, putting law enforcement offices on the highest alert.

In a new threat warning sent to 18,000 law enforcement agencies, the FBI said Monday it had credible information of terrorism threats, but no suggestion of the targets or methods for possible attacks. The new alert was based on intelligence reports that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network may strike, officials said.

“The administration has concluded based on information developed that there may be additional terrorist attacks within the United States and against United States interests over the next week,” Attorney General John Ashcroft said. It was the second such alert issued this month.

Ashcroft urged Americans to be vigilant and to report unusual circumstances or behavior. He also called for patience in the face of tightened security measures.

Officials said the source of the latest New Jersey anthrax case was uncertain and the case was under investigation.

“I don’t think it is appropriate to draw conclusions about what this latest case may imply,” said the CDC’s Ostroff.

Acting New Jersey Gov. Donald DiFrancesco ordered anthrax spore testing at 44 post offices in seven counties. All send mail to the Hamilton processing center. Some of these post offices had been tested earlier.

The Hamilton center handled anthrax-tainted envelopes delivered to Daschle’s office in the Hart building and to the New York offices of NBC News and the New York Post.

Anthrax escaping from a letter opened in Daschle’s office on Oct. 15 forced closure of the Hart building. Environmental Protection Agency officials said Monday they hoped experts would approve a plan to pump chlorine dioxide gas throughout the building to snuff out any remaining anthrax. The process could take 16 days, but would enable the nine-story building – where 50 senators have offices – to reopen in mid-November.

Agriculture Department officials said a “trace number” of anthrax spores were discovered in the mailroom of the department’s Economic Research Service, where 400 people are employed. It receives mail from the same Brentwood postal facility in Washington that also has tested positive for anthrax. No other USDA mailrooms in the Washington area had tested positive for bacterium, the officials said.

Testing continued at the Longworth House Office Building and aides to lawmakers with offices there were told that the building probably would not reopen until next week.

The National Science Foundation issued a $200,000 grant to the Institute for Genomic Research to sequence the entire genetic structure for the bacillus that caused a fatal pulmonary disease in Robert Stevens, 63, who was infected at American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, Fla. Stevens died Oct. 5, the first victim in the anthrax crisis.

Stevens and two others, both postal workers in Washington, died of pulmonary anthrax, the most serious form of the disease. Another Florida man was successfully treated for the disease and two mail handlers in Washington and one in New Jersey remained hospitalized with pulmonary anthrax.

In addition to the new case in New Jersey, skin anthrax has been diagnosed in four people in New York and two in New Jersey. The post office said it had 23 workers in the Washington-Baltimore area and three in New Jersey hospitalized with suspicious symptoms.