The Pentagon revealed on Wednesday that live anthrax was sent from Utah to as many as nine states.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is in the process of retrieving the samples, which a Pentagon spoksman said were shipped by accident.
Fox News reports that four people in three companies are being treated for “post-exposure” and being prescribed prophylaxis.
The material in question was prepared at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah and sent to the Defense Department and commercial labs in nine states. Some of those labs sent the anthrax to other locations.
The samples were only supposed to contain dead anthrax spores; however, a lab in Maryland, after testing the material, believed it to be live and contacted the CDC on Friday. The CDC confirmed the sample was live and will test the samples shipped to other locations.
A Pentagon spokesman said: “There is no known risk to the general public, and there are no suspected or confirmed cases of anthrax infection in potentially exposed lab workers.”
He added that the reason the lab created anthrax was to develop better testing methods for detecting the biological agent in the field.
The states that received the shipments are: Texas, Maryland, Wisconsin, Delaware, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, California and Virginia.
According to ABC News, a Defense Department official believes that all samples have now been secured.
This post originally appeared on Western Journalism – Equipping You With The Truth
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