N.J. residents attend meeting on anthrax

From Brian Palmer
CNN

EWING, New Jersey (CNN) -- About 400 residents of this central New Jersey city attended a town meeting Wednesday night where federal and state officials sought to allay their fears about the threat of anthrax, after some postal workers at a facility there contracted the bacteria.

The 90-minute meeting included a presentation on how to treat suspicious mail, and officials answered questions from worried residents.

Authorities also announced the formation of the New Jersey Anthrax Investigative Task Force, created in recent days to "identify, arrest and prosecute the person or persons sending letters laced with anthrax through the United States mail," the officials said.

Attending the meeting were Kevin Donovan, special agent in charge of the FBI in Newark, New Jersey; George DiFernando, the commissioner of the Department of Health and Senior Services for New Jersey; Kevin Burke, deputy inspector for U.S. Postal Inspectors; and Vito Cetta, district manager for the U.S. Postal Service in central New Jersey.

Cetta angrily denied rumors that suspicious mail was being burned.

"It is not happening ... I want to stand here and defend the 800,000 postal workers in this country," he said.

Postal officials did admit, however, that due to the testing for anthrax in some postal facilities in the state, they had lost 25 percent of their ability to process mail in central New Jersey.

The West Trenton Post Office is located in Ewing Township and is the home facility of a female letter carrier who contracted cutaneous anthrax. But officials said she may have gotten the infection from a letter picked up at the Trenton Distribution and Processing Center in Hamilton Township. She is one of two New Jersey postal employees with skin anthrax. A third has a suspected case of skin anthrax, and a fourth has a suspected case of the more serious inhalation anthrax. One of the biggest concerns residents voiced was about the life of the anthrax bacteria.

Officials said wiping down mailboxes with a Clorox-and-water solution should kill anything present there.