Anthrax Vials Could Be Missing from New Jersey State Lab
Those samples were among 19,251 samples collected between 2001 and 2004 from a postal center in Hamilton Township, where anthrax-laced letters were processed in October 2001.
”Even though we don’t really think these two samples are outside of the lab, this is not in a mode that we think could be used for weapons,” said Eddy Bresnitz, the state epidemiologist.
Health officials are searching for a pair of capped 2-inch-long test tubes containing liquid meant to prevent the spores from being inhaled.
“But if someone swallowed it, there is the potential they could get gastrointestinal anthrax,” said Health Department spokesman Tom Slater.
The FBI and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were notified Wednesday, after a three-week inventory at the state Public Health Environmental Laboratory in downtown Trenton only accounted for 350 of 352 positive samples listed in lab records.
Inventory check shows liquid anthrax missing from state lab
An inventory of samples stored in a state laboratory came up short a pair of two-inch test tubes containing liquid anthrax, [New Jersey] state officials announced today. They said it’s probably a paperwork problem.
The inventory, completed earlier this week, was being conducted as part of a process to move samples from one lab in the New Jersey Public Health Environmental Laboratory to a lab in an adjacent building that’s deemed to be safer.
more from Ashbury Park Press
Related link:
Day: Other agencies unprepared for anthrax threat
Some agencies still have not developed procedures for handling an anthrax attack, the threat of which “remains credible,” says a frustrated Tom Day, the U.S. Postal Service senior vice president of government relations. He offers procedures the Postal Service has adopted as an outline for others.
In its report “Anthrax Detection: Agencies Need to Validate Sampling Activities In Order to Increase Confidence in Negative Results,” GAO said that even the system the Postal Service had in place for detecting, moving and analyzing had not been validated. Generally, GAO concluded that systems certain agencies had in place were so unsound that “they could not provide any statistical confidence with regard to the basic question: Is this building contaminated?”
