Pentagon blunder sends live anthrax to UK

THE Pentagon last night admitted that one of its laboratories may accidentally have sent live anthrax to Britain.

Technicians sent samples to a uK research facility without making sure the spores had been killed with radiation, officials said.

The lab, run by British staff, has not been identified and no details have been released about how the samples were transported.

The uS Department of Defence claimed there was ‘no known risk’ to the public and an ‘extremely low risk’ to lab workers.

But biosafety experts have sharply criticised the error and called for better precautions. The samples were shipped from Dug- way army base which tests chemical weapons in a remote area of the utah desert.

The BBC reported that the shipment was as far back as 2007, though uS reports said that they began then and the package sent to the uK could have been more recent.

So far the Department of Defence has confirmed that labs in 19 uS states and at least four other countries received live anthrax.

Nobody has been taken ill but 31 people are receiving treatment as a precaution.

Colonel Steve Warren, of the Department of Defence, said it could not say for sure if Brit- ain received the live anthrax. But the uK was sent samples from a batch in which live spores were found. Colonel Warren said: ‘Another [batch] came up positive and that lot had sent samples to the uK and Massachusetts.’

Anthrax can be deadly unless a patient is given large doses of antibiotics. It has been sought by terrorists as it can be put into food and is hard to detect.

Other countries to which the uS has admitted sending anthrax include Australia, Canada and South Korea, where 22 personnel on a military base are being monitored.

The Pentagon is investigating and Senator Bill Nelson has called the error a ‘serious breach of trust’. The Department of Defence routinely sends dead anthrax spores or inactivated spores to research facilities around the uS and across the world.

The details of this particular shipment have not been revealed, but they are usually sent through commercial shipping companies.

The incident is not the first time uS authorities have had lapses with anthrax.

Last year at least 62 workers at the Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta were told they may have been exposed to infectious samples, but nobody was hurt. In September 2001, five people died when letters containing anthrax were sent to senators and media outlets.