The Anthrax Letters: The Attacks That Shocked America (40 page)

T
he signs finally came down in 1990. No longer were the graceful green slopes of Gruinard Island, off the northwest coast of Scotland, forbidden land. Since World War II, when government biological warfare experiments were conducted there, bold red lettering around the island had ominously warned: The Ground Is Contaminated With Anthrax and Dangerous. Landing is Prohibited. Now, nearly half a century later, after a monumental cleanup effort, the Ministry of Defense deemed the island safe again.

Until the early 1980s no one was sure whether the island would ever be decontaminated. Its 522 acres seemed too large an area to cover. Then, careful testing indicated that the spores were concentrated in a 5-acre area, in the top 3 inches of soil. That fortunate finding coincided with mounting pressure for action by worried mainlanders and members of Parliament, and the British government decided to try to restore the island to a safe condition. The challenge was formidable given the absence of experience in decontaminating any comparable area. But a scientific advisory group to the government surmised that a properly distributed solution of formaldehyde could destroy the bacteria.

The presumption was based on an earlier experience with an anthrax-contaminated building in Manchester, New Hampshire. In 1957 the Arms Textile Mill along the Merrimack River received a shipment of anthrax-laced goat hair from Pakistan. The discovery of the tainted shipment was made after nine employees came down with the disease. Four of the five who became infected with inhalation anthrax died. Coincidentally, Dr. Philip Brachman, who had been leading a CDC (then the Communicable Disease Center) investigation of an experimental anthrax vaccine at that plant, found that none of the immunized workers had become ill. Vaccination then became required of all employees until the building was closed in 1968. Fear about spores there continued to linger, however. A 1970 headline in the
Manchester Union Leader
declared “Lethal Spores Could Menace All Manchester.” Soon after, a decision was made to decontaminate the structure.

In 1971 workers in oxygen masks and protective gear walked through the building spraying detergent, and then formaldehyde vapor, in every direction. Five years later, as the building was being demolished, it was sprayed with a chlorine solution. The wooden remnants were incinerated, and the bricks were carted a half-mile away for burial deep under the earth.

The decision to use formaldehyde had been based on its wellestablished germicidal qualities. Its sweet pungent odor was familiar in operating rooms and other health care facilities. The mill in Manchester had been the largest decontamination project until that time. Then came the vastly greater challenge of Gruinard Island.

In 1986 a multi-step approach to cleanse the five contaminated acres of Gruinard Island was begun. First came spraying with a herbicide and a burning off of the dead vegetation. Then an elaborate network of perforated tubing was snaked across the denuded ground surface. From June through August a 5 percent concentration of formaldehyde in seawater was pumped through the tubes to cover one land segment after another. An estimated 50 liters slowly soaked into every square meter of soil (that is, about a dozen gallons of formaldehyde mix per square yard).

Months later soil samples showed that most, but not all, of the affected area was free of viable anthrax spores. The tainted locations were retreated in July 1987. After further tests, in 1988 the science advisory group declared the chance of contracting anthrax on Gruinard Island was remote. By then the island had been drenched with 280 tons of formaldehyde diluted in 2,000 tons of seawater. The government said in 1990 that the island was safe, and the restrictive signs were removed.

Despite the assurance, few people have set foot on Gruinard Island. In 2001 a British
Telegraph
reporter asked a middle-age woman in the village of Laide, across the bay, about her reluctance to go there. “You never know, do you?” she replied. A man in a nearby shop had a similar reaction. “Why take a chance?” he asked. “Life out here is hard enough as it is.”

Gruinard Island exemplifies the challenge of addressing widespread anthrax contamination, even though formaldehyde is known to kill spores. The chemical has been used to decontaminate locations in the United States as well, notably Building 470 at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Known as the “Tower,” it is a seven-story brick structure in which anthrax and other biological warfare agents were produced. Since 1969, when the United States ended its offensive biological weapons program, the building has gone unused. Large steel tanks, in which thousands of gallons of anthrax slurry were once mixed, stand gray with dirt and age. The building has been gassed with formaldehyde vapor, but suspicion remains that spores might be buried in the crevices. An Army publication indicated in 1993 that despite “three successful decontamination procedures [Building 470] was not certified 100 percent clean.” Government officials contend the building poses no danger and that plans are under way to have it razed.

Given the experiences with Gruinard and the Tower, concerns about contamination wrought by the anthrax letters were not surprising. Spores were found in scores of locations along the paths of the letters. Where contamination was discovered in limited sections of buildings and post offices, cleanup was accomplished in a few months. But large structures, including the American Media building in Florida and the postal centers in Hamilton, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., remain sealed and off limits.

Tom Day is a round man with a friendly smile, a beardless Santa Claus. A 20-year veteran of the U.S. Postal Service, he has been vice president for engineering since 2000. One of his responsibilities has been to oversee the cleanup of anthrax-contaminated post offices. Spores were found in 23 mail facilities, but only the sorting centers in Hamilton and Washington were infested throughout. “The other 21 were cleaned up by surface scrubbing with bleach,” he said. “Post-testing assured us that it was effective.”

A West Point graduate, Day grew up on Long Island where he became a devoted New York Yankees fan. He named the players to me in the large painting on his office wall in Merrifield, Virginia: “That’s Thurmond Munson tagging out Steve Garvey in the 1978 World Series.” He laughed, and added that the Yankees beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games.

We sat at a small brown table 20 feet from his desk. It was early November 2002, a year after the anthrax letters left their trails of spores. Cost projections for remediation had already tripled beyond earlier estimates. In March the postal service had figured that cleaning up the Brentwood center would come to $23 million and Hamilton $13 million. Day’s voice turned lower: “Now it looks as though both of them together will cost more than $100 million.” In fact the meter was still running. Two months after we spoke, projections had risen to $100 million to clean up Brentwood alone and another $50 million for Hamilton. The estimates were based in part on the experience with the cleanup on Capitol Hill, including the Hart Senate Office Building. The cost there ended up at $41.7 million, nearly double the initial projection of $23 million.

“We assisted the Environmental Protection Agency in cleaning up the Hart Building and we learned a lot from that experience,” Day said. There, chlorine dioxide was used for the first time in a large-scale decontamination. Why not formaldehyde? I asked. Day said that they considered using formaldehyde and several other antimicrobial agents, including methyl bromide and ethylene oxide, but they’re all quite toxic, carcinogenic. On the other hand, chlorine dioxide, which has long been used to kill germs as part of the purification process in water treatment plants, “quickly decays and becomes a harmless substance.”

The chlorine dioxide treatment in the Hart Building was not an immediate success. After an initial spraying in December, viable anthrax spores were still found. A second fumigation effort ended with similar results. Finally, a third release of the chemical apparently killed the remaining bacilli, and the building was reopened in January 2002.

Decontamination of the postal centers posed a much bigger challenge. The treated section of the Hart Building measured 3,000 square feet. The Brentwood facility, at 632,000 square feet, was 210 times larger. Planning and bleach scrubbing in advance of the chlorine dioxide release at Brentwood were not completed until December 2002. In the third week of December, 200 workers assembled at Brentwood amid 30-foot-high chemical tanks, dieselpowered generators, and 21 miles of intricately laid-out plastic tubing. Humidity in the building had been raised to 70 percent and the temperature to 75 degrees. These conditions would optimize the effects of the gas. Then, 60 tank trucks arrived, each with a police escort. They carried 270,000 gallons of liquid that would be converted to chlorine dioxide gas.

The long-awaited process was finally under way. The gas was pumped into the building and maintained at high levels for 12 hours in hopes that it would reach into every corner and crack. In the weeks after, 5,029 air and surface samples were taken to determine if any spores survived. In March 2003, Tom Day held a press conference at which he happily announced that the testing found no evidence of live spores. “Not a one,” he emphasized. He hoped that dismantling the tubing and chemical tanks could begin soon and that the building would reopen later in the year. How many employees would return remains uncertain. Dena Briscoe, president of Brentwood Exposed, a support group of postal employees who had worked at the Brentwood center, declared: “The majority of workers have anxieties about going back.”

A few months earlier, in November 2002, Day had traveled to the Hamilton, New Jersey, municipal hall to appear before the State Assembly’s Committee on Homeland Security. He sat in a high-back purple chair facing a semicircle of the six state legislators. As soon as decontamination at Brentwood was complete, he told them, cleanup would begin at the Hamilton center. Assemblyman Gary Guear, vice chairman of the committee, asked Day: “Can you guarantee that the New Jersey facility will be as clean as the Hart Office Building?”

Day answered, “We’ll aim for zero contamination.” “How hot is the New Jersey facility compared to Brentwood?” Guear asked. “Pretty much the same. They have spores throughout,” Day responded.

Assemblywoman Joan Quigley, chairwoman of the committee, asked about chlorine dioxide. How dangerous is it to people? she wanted to know. Day tried to be reassuring: “Even in the worst case, if there were massive leakage of the gas, the advice is just to go inside somewhere and seek shelter, because it dissipates in a half hour or so.” As the meeting adjourned the mood was somber. The legislators thanked Day but were still uneasy about the absence of a timetable for cleaning up the Hamilton center.

Meanwhile, the American Media building in Boca Raton, Florida, like the Hamilton facility, remained contaminated and sealed. In February 2003, Congress voted to purchase the structure for $1.00. Estimates to decontaminate the building ranged from $10 million to $100 million, but no one knew when the effort would be undertaken.