The Defense Department said Wednesday to prepare for more master strains of anthrax at an Army laboratory that was the source of live samples inadvertently shipped to sites across the U.S. and abroad, including a shipment to the Pentagon itself.
So far, three master strains at the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah have tested for live spores when the Army’s irradiation procedures there should have rendered the strains inert. Wednesday morning, Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren confirmed that there are additional master strains at Dugway that still need to be tested.
Warren said there are more than three master strains at Dugway that are used to generate samples for labs, and that not all of those master strains have been re-tested yet, raising the potential that more labs may have received live strains than is known.
The Pentagon’s Force Protection Agency, or PFPA, received a sample shipment in 2014 that was later found to be from one of the three identified strains with live spores. That sample was sent first from Dugway to a lab in Maryland, where the sample was further diluted before being sent to an offsite location for PFPA to use, Warren said. The force protection group uses the samples to calibrate their own biological threat detection sensors and equipment, Warren said.
“The only way to do that is with inactivated anthrax spores,” Warren said.
The Dugway lab, located about 85 miles west of Salt Lake City, provides samples to labs across the U.S. and to military installations for testing and research. The strain was never inside the Pentagon, Warren said, and has since been isolated, he said.
The sample is from one of now three known master strains at the Dugway lab that were supposed to be inert, but have since been found to contain live spores.
So far the Pentagon has confirmed that 12 states and three countries also received shipments from the live strains: California, Washington, Texas, Utah, Tennessee, Virginia, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Delaware. In addition, potentially live samples were sent to South Korea, Canada and Australia.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating the issue, as is Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work.
