Search for Anthrax bacteria in Pentagon mail

Preliminary tests on mail to the Pentagon in March have shown up positive for anthrax bacteria. The mail was taken to 12 distribution nodes throughout the Pentagon from the Pentagon’s Remote Delivery Facility; it now is being moved back to a designated area in the RDF said Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood.

Officials are working to collect an estimated 8,000 pieces of mail that passed through the building’s mail-processing facility between March 10 and 14.

They believe it “highly unlikely” that any of the suspect mail has been delivered to individual offices. It is not clear if any mail from that timeframe moved through to the Skyline office complex, in nearby Falls Church, Va., where a separate biological alarm indicated the presence of anthrax there on March 14.

Local officials shut down three buildings leased by the Defense Department after an alarm sounded in one building there. Individual test results on swabs taken from 263 people who may have passed through the Pentagon facility in the specified timeframe have all been negative for exposure to anthrax. 200 people work in the facility, the others are people who may have come in contact with the area.

The delivery facility which is next to the Pentagon building will hopefully reopen soon. The mail-processing operations take up only 10 percent of the 200,000-square-foot facility; they may in future cordon off the mail-sorting areas for further testing and investigation and reopen the rest of the facility, or move the facility’s delivery-screening function to another location temporarily.

It is important said Flood to resume some of that function because it’s not just mail that’s being affected. All deliveries to the Pentagon - including office and cleaning supplies and food for the building’s eateries - have been halted for the time being.