Anthrax most dangerous of biological agents

Friday, Feb. 20, 1998 | 5:32 a.m.

U.S. defense officials consider anthrax bacteria deadlier than the deadliest chemical warfare agent. And it's cheap to produce.

As a weapon, anthrax would be most lethal if released as very small particles in a confined space, Department of Defense data sheets indicate. Once the bacteria settles on the ground, anthrax is less virulent, but could still cause a skin infection.

Once-secret documents point to a Japanese attack with anthrax on China during World War II before America entered the war, Harvard University biochemist Matt Meselson said.

The Japanese have sued over the accusation.

"There's considerable evidence it happened," Meselson said Thursday after two men were arrested in Henderson possessing vials, petri dishes and bags probably containing the deadly bacteria.

U.S. troops feared such a biological threat during the 1991 Gulf War.

If a toxin such as anthrax was released in a casino or a government building in the Las Vegas Valley, Clark County emergency crews would respond by sealing off the site and evacuating people if the bacteria was airborne, said Girard Page, plans and operations officer for the county's emergency management office.

American Type Cultural Collection, an online catalog, lists four available anthrax strains and one strain of bubonic plague. Until a few years ago, it was easy to get samples of almost any organism from the organization, a private, nonprofit repository of biological materials in Rockville, Md. Most of the bacteria is in the hands of federal government scientists.

Anthrax exists anywhere there are animals such as sheep and cows. Most of the trouble with it occurs between those animals, unless spores are inhaled or eaten by people.

The organism that creates the disease is Bacillus anthracis, a spore-forming bacteria that can lurk in soils for years and infects warm-blooded animals. People become infected by handling animal products such as hides or inhaling the spores.

Rep. John Ensign, R-Nev., a veterinarian, said anthrax is part of medical education for veterinarians. Swollen, dead animals in a field pose threats to large-animal doctors, he said.

After inhaling spores, a person can develop cold-like symptoms within six days that quickly progress to severe breathing problems. The body goes into shock and, without antibiotic treatment, death comes within a day or two.

In 1979 the Sverdlovsk epidemic in the former Soviet Union killed 68 people in the largest documented anthrax outbreak of its kind, after spores escaped from a secret military microbiology facility.

Russian scientists created a new strain of anthrax last year and announced it in the British scientific journal "Vaccine." Made possible by genetic engineering, the new anthrax is something that biological warfare experts have feared since the technology was developed in the 1970s.

The oldest traces of it were discovered on the wrappings of Egyptian mummies.