U.S. military mistakenly ships anthrax to TN
The Pentagon says it inadvertently shipped live anthrax spores to as many as nine laboratories - including a Tennessee location - and is investigating how that happened.
Federal officials had not identified the name of the Tennessee lab or where it was located as of Wednesday evening. The nine labs labs were supposed to receive dead, or inactivated, anthrax samples for research use.
Spokesman Col. Steve Warren says the Pentagon is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to retrieve the samples.
He says the government has confirmed one shipment contained live spores and suspects eight others did, too.
"There is no known risk to the general public, and there are no suspected or confirmed cases of anthrax infection in potentially exposed lab workers," Warren said. "The DoD (Department of Defense) lab was working as part of a DoD effort to develop a field-based test to identify biological threats in the environment. Out of an abundance of caution, DoD has stopped the shipment of this material from its labs pending completion of the investigation."
The live spores were shipped from Dugway Proving Ground in Utah — a Defense Department facility — to government and commercial labs in Texas, Maryland, Wisconsin, Delaware, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, California and Virginia.
Contact with anthrax spores can cause severe illness.
The CDC issued the following statement when contacted by The Tennessean:
"CDC is investigating the possible inadvertent transfer of a select agent from the U. S. Department of Defense (DOD) to labs in nine states," At this time we do not suspect any risk to the general public.
The CDC investigation was started after a request for technical consultation from a private commercial lab. The lab was working as part of a DOD effort to develop a new diagnostic test to identify biological threats. Although an inactivated agent was expected, the lab reported they were able to grow live Bacillus anthracis.
CDC is working in conjunction with state and federal partners to conduct an investigation with all the labs that received samples from the DOD. The ongoing investigation includes determining if the labs also received other live samples, epidemiologic consultation, worker safety review, laboratory analysis, and handling of laboratory waste.
All samples involved in the investigation will be securely transferred to CDC or Laboratory Response Network (LRN) laboratories for further testing. CDC has sent officials from the CDC Federal Select Agent Program to the DOD labs to conduct onsite investigations."
Reach Tom Wilemon at 615-726-5961 and on Twitter @TomWilemon. Associated Press contributed to this report.