Anthrax, an old but elusive enemy

By Reuters, 10/09/01

WASHINGTON -- The bacteria responsible for anthrax, once a disease of farm animals, comes from anthracis, the Greek word for coal, because infection can cause black scabs on the skin.

This cutaneous or skin infection is not especially dangerous, but the bacteria can form spores, which can survive being ground up, dried, buried or sprayed around, to come back to active life in a warm, wet place, such as inside a human nose.

The spores can grow for months before causing symptoms. By the time illness starts -- usually a vague, flu-like disease or meningitis, as in the case of 63-year-old Robert Stevens who died last week -- it is too late.

Without quick antibiotic treatment, more than 80 percent of people who become ill after inhaling anthrax spores die.

Spores could be sprayed by something like a crop-dusting aircraft, a modified fire extinguisher or released by a home-made aerosol. Experts say while anthrax spores are not available on store shelves, they are not difficult to obtain.

The American Medical Association says at least 17 nations are believed to have offensive biological weapons programs, including Iraq, which has acknowledged producing anthrax.

The United States shut down its own anthrax weapons program decades ago.

It would be difficult to know an attack had taken place until after people started to get sick.

The AMA said an anthrax aerosol would be odorless and invisible following release and would have the potential to travel many miles before disseminating. People who stayed indoors would be just as likely to become infected.

In one accident in 1979 at a military lab in Sverdlosk in the Soviet Union, at least 79 people became ill and 68 of them died. The cases occurred from two to 43 days after exposure, the AMA said.

Anthrax disease is not contagious -- it cannot spread from person to person. But the spores are so small it is impossible to know if someone has breathed them in.

Congress's Office of Technology Assessment estimated that anywhere between 130,000 and 3 million people would die if someone released 220 pounds of anthrax spores over Washington.