House Panel Told of Anthrax Testing Problem

Post offices that were tested for anthrax using dry cotton swabs should be tested again because that method is not the best way of detecting the potentially lethal spores, scientists told a House subcommittee yesterday.

In 2001, postal officials tested the Wallingford, Conn., postal facility for anthrax with dry cotton swabs and found nothing. But when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested the facility using wet wipes and a high-efficiency particulate air vacuum, it found more than 3 million anthrax spores.

Dry swabs are an inefficient way of testing for anthrax and there is no guarantee that other anthrax spores weren't missed if that method was used in other facilities, scientists told the House Government Reform subcommittee.

The ones that should be retested are "those facilities deemed free of anthrax based on a single dry swab," said Keith Rhodes, the chief technologist for the General Accounting Office's Center for Technology and Engineering.

Levels between 8,000 and 10,000 spores are considered harmful; the District's Brentwood facility, which was closed for cleaning, had levels between 8,700 and 2 million.