By Sharon Salyer

Herald Writer

SHORELINE — Scientists working at this state Health Department lab – where one high-security area requires a special pass key just to walk through the first of two sets of locked metal doors and where workers sometimes don protective breathing respirators that make them look like extras for a space alien movie — have investigated more than 70 suspicious substances since the beginning of the national anthrax scare.

Among them was a bottle filled with "unknown liquid" U.S. Customs officials confiscated from an Iranian man trying to cross the border at Blaine. An unexpected letter from Brunei that caused panic in the business office it was delivered to. And an envelope from Japan that had burst open, emitting a white, powdery substance in a post office cart.

Although the bottle with the suspicious liquid triggered a call-out of the of the National Guard’s 22-member civil support hazardous material team to the state lab on NE 150th Street, it was likely just rose water.

The letter from Islamic Brunei, a Southeastern Asian country bordering the South China Sea and Malaysia, was an invitation to a professional conference in Singapore.

And that envelope from Japan emitting the white, powdery substance? It was potato starch being sent to a relative in Whitman County.

"People are just anxious about stuff they normally wouldn’t have noticed," said Dr. Jo Hofmann, acting state epidemiologist.

She and other state health officials say the best assurance for the public: Not one case of anthrax has been found so far in Washington.

Her team of disease detectives works closely with microbiologists and other scientists housed at the state lab to identify the source and track the spread of 50 communicable diseases monitored by the state.

Recently, heightened public vigilance resulting from the illnesses and deaths caused by anthrax-infected letters has led to investigations of suspicious letters, packages and substances by local law enforcement agencies across the state.

Specimens, including those from areas as seemingly unlikely for an anthrax attack as a rural town in Eastern Washington with only two roads leading to it, are sent for analysis to the 50,000-square-foot state health laboratory.

Of the 100 people who work at the lab, three now work full time on bioterrorism testing. Scientists try to provide preliminary anthrax results in two to three hours, said microbiologist Mike McDowell.

Any item suspected of being part of a bioterrorist attack is brought to the lab by law enforcement agencies and protected as crime-scene evidence under lock and key.

Before analyzing any of the most dangerous or highly contagious bacteria and viruses, scientists are outfitted with protective garb: aqua-colored disposable lab coats, protective gloves and respiratory masks with two squat, round, purple HEPA filters jutting out near their mouth.

Tests aren’t conducted to positively identify each substance. "All we can say is there are no bad bacteria in here," Hofmann said. "So we have had things where people in the lab, after ruling out everything bad, look at the powder and say, ‘Sure looks like cornstarch to me.’ "

Hofmann, 46, took over as the state’s top virus and bacterial detective in August. For the previous two years, she investigated tuberculosis, measles, E. coli and other communicable disease outbreaks for the Snohomish Health District.

From 1993 to 1995, as a lieutenant commander in the Public Health Service, she worked at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Specializing in respiratory diseases, her investigations included an outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease eventually traced to the whirlpool of a cruise ship.

By training and background Hofmann has prepared her whole career to help map the public health response to potent, life-threatening communicable diseases.

Even so, she admits that when hearing the initial sketchy details of the first anthrax case in Florida, it was hard to convince herself that this was unlike anything the nation had ever known.

In the past two years, anthrax outbreaks among deer, cattle and horses have been reported to the federal Agriculture Department.

"In the U.S., generally, it’s a very unusual disease," she said.

As the hours ticked by, though, the facts quietly and persistently kept piling up, like pyramiding sand in an hourglass clock.

Unable to sleep, she lay in bed one night working a kind of mental abacus: On one side, what she knew of the disease patterns of anthrax in the United States. On the other, how the facts in the Florida case that simply didn’t fit the usual pattern of animal-to-human-caused anthrax.

Finally, she realized that public health officials were facing the first wave of something they quietly have been preparing several years for: a bioterrorist attack.

There’s no tests that can predict who will become seriously ill from anthrax, Hofmann said. "Most tests for anthrax will not be positive until people are fairly sick."

Nasal swabs taken from some patients on the East Cost "may be able to pick up if they have been exposed," but are only effective if conducted within hours of exposure.

Despite being surrounded by high tech equipment, including machines which can genetically "fingerprint" communicable diseases to see if separate exposures came from the same source, state Health Department scientists admit they have no antidote for what really ails Washington residents — fear.

All they can do is diligently conduct tests and report their findings.

"Of all the suspicious letters and packages we’ve been evaluating in the past month, none have had any evidence of being contaminated by bacterial bioterrorist agents," Hofmann said.

"Currently, the risk in Washington state is very low."

You can call Herald Writer Sharon Salyer at 425-339-3486

or send e-mail to salyer@heraldnet.com.