Exposed..

 

Seventy-five lab workers may have been exposed to anthrax at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, the leading US lab for tracking infectious disease.  

According to the CDC, culture dishes of anthrax bacteria kept in a level 3 high-containment lab, were subjected to a treatment that should have killed them. Even though the treatment was reportedly experimental, the dishes were sent to a level 2 lower containment lab in the same building, to help develop detectors for environmental anthrax.

Workers there did not use heavy protective gear for procedures that could have spritzed the bacteria into the air as the anthrax was supposed to be dead. But few days later, when the dishes were being gathered for disposal, a live anthrax culture was growing on one.

People exposed have been given the anthrax vaccine and ciprofloxacin, the antibiotic that prevented illness when anthrax was sent to US government and media offices in 2001.