USPS Mail facilities reopen after anthrax scare

The post office has reopened 11 Washington-area facilities that had been shuttered as a precaution after tests at a naval mail-sorting office indicated the possible presence of anthrax. Follow-up tests have come back negative for anthrax.

“Everything’s back to normal,” said Jim Quirk, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service.

Two of the 11 post offices were reopened Friday night, and the other nine resumed business as usual Saturday morning.

The facilities were closed Thursday after an automated alarm and a follow-up test indicated the presence of small amounts of biological pathogens, possibly anthrax, at the Anacostia Naval Station, which handles mail for federal agencies.

Further testing found no anthrax in air samples and swabs at the naval mail office, according to Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse. Results from a final round of testing were expected later, he said. Officials have found no contaminated mail.

Five workers at the Navy site were offered the antibiotic ciprofloxacin as a precaution recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Navy spokesman Ed Zeigler.

Preliminary tests for anthrax often are inaccurate. Several false alarms have temporarily disrupted business since the still-unsolved anthrax attacks in 2001.

The anthrax-by-mail incidents in late 2001 showed that inhaling only a few spores, in some cases, was enough to infect some people with the deadly disease.

Five people died in those attacks, which also forced the shutdown and cleanup of postal and other types of facilities in Washington and elsewhere.