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| FILE - In this May 11, 2003, file photo, Microbiologist Ruth Bryan works with BG nerve agent simulant in Class III Glove Box in the Life Sciences Test Facility at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. The specialized airtight enclosure is also used for hands-on work with anthrax and other deadly agents. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is investigating what the Pentagon called an inadvertent shipment of live anthrax spores to government and commercial laboratories in as many as nine states, as well as one overseas, that expected to receive dead spores. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- The U.S. Army's top general said Thursday that human error
probably was not a factor in the Army's mistaken shipment of live
anthrax samples from a chemical weapons testing site that was opened
more than 70 years ago in a desolate stretch of desert in Utah.
Samples
from the anthrax lot ended up at 18 labs in nine states and an Army lab
in South Korea, leading more than two dozen people to get treatment for
possible exposure.
Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army
chief of staff, told reporters the problem may have been a failure in
the technical process of killing, or inactivating, anthrax samples.
Odierno
said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating
what went wrong at Dugway Proving Ground, the Army installation in Utah
where the anthrax originated.
Officials said
the government labs that received the suspect anthrax were at the Army's
Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland and the Naval Surface
Warfare Center in Virginia. The rest were commercial labs, which the
Pentagon has declined to identify, citing legal constraints.
Some
of the samples sent from Utah were also transferred to other labs in
the U.S. by the Edgewood center, a research and development resource for
nonmedical chemical and biological defense.
CDC
spokesman Jason McDonald said four people at labs in Delaware, Texas
and Wisconsin were recommended to get antibiotics as a precaution,
although they are not sick. U.S. officials at Osan Air Base in South
Korea said 22 people were being treated for possible exposure.
Odierno
said normal procedures had been followed, and that he was not aware
that such a problem had surfaced previously at Dugway.
But
there have been at least two other questionable incidents at the
military post 85 miles west of Salt Lake City that has been testing
chemical and biological warfare weapons since it was opened in 1942.
In 2011, Dugway was locked down for 12 hours because less than one-fourth of a teaspoon of VX nerve agent was unaccounted for.
Military
officials launched an internal investigation, but the results were not
released. Questions about the incident were not answered Thursday by
military officials. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said in 2011 that he met with
the base commander and that the issue had been resolved to his
satisfaction.
In 1968, Dugway came under
scrutiny when 6,000 sheep died nearby. An Army report acknowledged that
the nerve agent was found in snow and grass samples, The Salt Lake
Tribune reported based on a report that was declassified in 1978. An
Army spokesman said in the late 1990s that state agriculture scientists
never identified the cause of death of the sheep.
Herbert said in a statement he's concerned about the incident and is working with the CDC to monitor the investigation.
Test
facilities like Dugway are intended to develop ways to defend against
biochemical warfare, which some fear could be used by terrorists, said
Barry M. Blechman, co-founder of the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan
global security group in Washington.
He doesn't know why it was sending anthrax and is perplexed at how the mistake was made.
"This
is an accident that should never happen," Blechman said. "You should
have double-triple-positive controls over any live, lethal agent."
Steve
Erickson, of the volunteer military watchdog group Citizens Education
Project, said the incident isn't cause for panic but suggests more
oversight is needed.
"Ever since 9/11, there's
been a propensity to throw money at biodefense," Erickson said. "When
you allow these activities to blossom and burgeon over a period of years
without any effective oversight, you are asking for trouble."
The
Dugway Proving Ground was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The site has gone through name changes and been closed and reopened
several times.
It sits on 180,000 acres of
flat, desert terrain. It's miles from any population base, but it has a
village with an elementary and high school, medical clinic, a few
restaurants, a theater, pool, gym, and homes and temporary lodging.
About
1,700 people work at Dugway, including a mix of military and
nonmilitary scientists, chemists,
microbiologists and engineers.
It is one of six Army equipment-testing facilities that also include sites in Maryland, Arizona, Alabama and New Mexico.
In
one of the chemical testing buildings at Dugway, chambers are used to
test chemical warfare agents, the Army says in online materials. An
outdoor range tests smokes, obscurants and explosives.
