22 October 2001

Two U.S. Postal Worker Deaths Probably Caused by Anthrax, Officials Say

By Wendy S. Ross
Washington File White House Correspondent

Washington -- The death of two postal workers in the nation's capital may have been caused by the inhaled form of anthrax, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and other officials told reporters at a White House news briefing October 22.

"It is very clear that their symptoms are suspicious and their deaths are likely due to anthrax," Ridge said, but "final, definitive medical tests" as to the cause of their deaths are still some hours away.

Both men, who died October 22, worked at the Brentwood postal facility in Washington, where an anthrax-tainted letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle several days before was processed.

In addition, two other postal workers from the Brentwood facility are in the hospital being treated with antibiotics after having tested positive for anthrax inhalation, Ridge said.

The Brentwood facility and an airmail handling facility in Maryland near Baltimore-Washington International Airport have been closed indefinitely.

Post Master General John Potter said "Our postal family is deeply saddened by today's news, and shaken by the thought of terrorists using the U.S. mail as a tool for their evil."

"Our hearts are heavy knowing that two co-workers have become the latest victims of terrorism. It's clear to us, like other symbols of American freedom and power, the mail and our employees have become a target of terrorists. It is equally clear that we must take extraordinary steps to protect them both."

Potter also said the Postal Service will not curtail its mail delivery service. It processes about 208,000 million pieces of mail yearly, he said, and has delivered 20,000 million items since the terrorist attacks of September 11.

The Postal Service, he said, is considering putting mail through ultraviolet light equipment to sanitize it, as is done with food, surgical equipment and medical supplies.

Potter said the Postal Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation will jointly provide a $1 million dollar reward for information that will lead to arrests of the person or persons responsible for the anthrax attacks, and he said hoax cases will be criminally prosecuted.

"We've lost two of our own," said President of the National Association of Letter Carriers Vincent Sombrotto, but he said this "heinous way" of intimidating the Postal Service will not succeed.

"We will not be deterred from doing our job," he said. "We are all soldiers in this war" against terrorism.

"We have a proud history of more than 200 years of delivering, under all circumstances, as arduous and as difficult as they may be," he said. "This is another one of those circumstances where we have to rise to the occasion."

Testing has begun on more than 2,000 postal employees at the Washington and Maryland facilities for possible anthrax exposure.

Questioned about why it has taken so long for the decision to be made to test the workers at the two facilities, Dr. Mitch Cohen of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said "Much of what we've determined has been from the previous investigations. This is really a new phenomena. At first, we had no evidence that any of the mail handlers were at risk. So this phenomena of first having skin disease in New Jersey and now having inhalational disease is an evolution.

"Now how it's actually occurring isn't clear, and that's part of our epidemiologic investigation -- is to try to track down what are those kinds of exposures and try to eliminate them, so that we can make things safer."

"The postal system is every much a part of this country as our national highway system," Ridge said. "And it's pretty clear that whoever decided to challenge the postal system by using anthrax to not only disrupt service but take the lives of the men and women" show clearly "that we have casualties not just offshore, we have casualties in the towers in New York, we have casualties in the Post Office. So it's pretty clear that this speaks to one war in two battlefields."

Ridge said "checklists that give specific and detailed guidelines on how to handle suspicious packages" can be found on the U.S. Postal Service's Web site at www.usps.gov, or by accessing CDC's Web site at www.cdc.gov.