WASHINGTON, Jan. 16, 2003
No Anthrax Found At Fed Mail Center
Suspect Letter That Passed Through Center Also Safe
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Anthrax bacteria. (AP)
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Decontamination efforts on the postal facility closed after the 2001 anthrax attacks began in December. (AP)
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Cipro, a powerful antibiotic, can be used to treat anthrax, which is often deadly is contracted in its inhalation form. (AP)
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Interactive Anthrax Follow the search for the anthrax attacker, learn about the bacteria's use as a bio-weapon and find out how you can get infected and what it does to your body.
All results of tests done on several samples turned up negative, the Postal Service announced Wednesday.
The Washington postal facility was closed for the day while samples from the site were tested. It was expected to reopen Thursday.
Federal Reserve spokesman David Skidmore said a single letter addressed to Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Roger Ferguson had come back positive on Tuesday.
The suspect sample was sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for further testing. Late Wednesday, the Fed announced that those tests, conducted by the state of North Carolina under the CDC's guidance, found no presence of anthrax.
The central bank said the CDC in Atlanta planned more tests on the sample.
Since the anthrax-by-mail attacks in the fall of 2001, the Fed has been testing its mail in an outside trailer before allowing it into the central bank's headquarters. There had been positive readings twice before, in December 2001 and May 2002, but this was the first time that a more sophisticated laboratory test had detected the presence of live anthrax spores.
Five people died in the October 2001 attacks, including two postal workers. Eighteen other people were infected by the disease.
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