Pentagon Sent Live Anthrax to 9 States

Samples of live anthrax were inadvertently shipped to private research laboratories in nine states and one in South Korea that were supposed to have received dead anthrax samples, the Pentagon confirmed today. There is no known risk to the general public and there have been no suspected or confirmed cases of anthrax infection as a result of the inadvertent shipment, officials said. The samples were shipped on April 30 from the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah to a military laboratory in Maryland. From there they were shipped via a commercial shipper to eight companies with laboratories in nine states: California, Texas, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey and New York. According to a Defense official, a laboratory in Maryland detected that their shipment contained live samples and contacted the CDC. That triggered a response from the Defense Department and other agencies, including the FBI, to trace the shipments to ensure that they were properly secured. According to CDC spokesman Jason McDonald, a CDC team was at Dugway investigating how the inadvertent shipment occurred.