Anthrax found at Connecticut facility likely not new

Last fall's anthrax attacks left several people dead.

WALLINGFORD, Connecticut (CNN) -- Three anthrax spores found in a mail processing center here are likely residual remains from a contamination last October and do not reflect a new threat, health and postal officials said Thursday.

In testing done before routine maintenance, 103 environmental samples were taken Sunday from ceiling rafters in the Southern Connecticut Processing and Distribution Center. On Thursday, three of the samples came back positive for anthrax, said U.S. Postal Service spokesman Jerry Kreienkamp.

Officials do not believe it reflects a new source of contamination, of the sort that caused panic last fall when anthrax-tainted letters were sent through the mail and postal workers died after handling the infected mail, said William Gerrish, spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Public Health.

Last October, 94-year-old Ottilie Lundgren, of Oxford, Connecticut, became the fifth person to die in the anthrax attacks that followed September 11.

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Investigators were initially baffled at how the elderly widow who lived in a rural home contracted the bacterium, since no traces were found in her house. But a trace amount of anthrax was found on an envelope of a letter sent to a home in a nearby community, leading to the theory that Lundgren contracted anthrax through a piece of mail that had been cross-contaminated with a tainted letter.

The letters had been sorted at the Wallingford mail facility. Tests later picked up spores on a few sorting machines, which were cleaned before the center reopened, Kreienkamp said.

Gerrish said officials were not surprised to find residual spores because of their location -- high above the sorting machines in the large, open processing room, which was not part of the original cleanup. But because of the October contamination, postal officials decided to test for anthrax before workers went up high to clean the room.

"It was a precautionary test just before we had anybody clean there, to make sure it was safe," said Kreienkamp.

All the postal workers who worked in the room have now been reassigned, he said, until the entire area can be decontaminated -- a process that will take at least a week. Mail delivery will not be affected, he said.

Gerrish said the employees will not be tested for exposure and should not feel at risk.

"People should not be alarmed by this information, and they should just try to become as informed as they can," Gerrish said. "We have staff at the facility right now talking to the employees there."