Tularemia, which was weaponized back in the sixties was detected
on the Capitol Mall in Washington, DC, Sep 24 and 25. This was duriing the Peace March where Cindy Sheehan and other protesters spoke this last weekend.
More than a half-dozen sensors operating from 10 a.m. Saturday to 10 a.m. Sunday -- at sites including the Lincoln Memorial, Fort McNair and Judiciary Square -- detected the bacteria, Pane said he was told.
He said the CDC expected to notify hospitals nationwide as a precaution because so many people came from out of town to the Mall last weekend.
Oct 3, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – Several air sensors detected traces of the tularemia pathogen on the Capitol Mall in Washington, DC, Sep 24 and 25, but no cases of illness have been reported among people who were in the area at the time, according to health officials.
In a Sep 30 message to health agencies, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said environmental air monitors in the Capitol Mall "signaled the low level presence of Francisella tularensis," the bacterium that causes tularemia.
The microbe is one of the six agents considered most likely to be used by terrorists as a biological weapon. But Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials said the pathogen probably was a natural occurrence and not the result of bioterrorism, according to a Washington Post report.
Tens of thousands of people were on the mall Sep 24 for antiwar demonstrations and the National Book Festival, according to the Post. But no cases or suspected cases of tularemia have been reported, CDC spokesman Von Roebuck told CIDRAP News today.
The air samples that yielded the findings were collected between 10 a.m. Sep 24 and 10 a.m. Sep 25, the Post reported. The air monitors are part of the federal BioWatch program, which monitors the air for pathogens in major cities around the country. The Post said Washington area health officials were notified of the findings on Sep 30.
After tests in Washington detected the pathogen on air filters, further tests were done by the CDC in Atlanta, according to the Post.
Roebuck said today he didn't know yet what quantity of the agent was found or what strain of tularemia it was.
"We're looking to find out if anyone in the medical community has any patients with symptoms that could be similar to tularemia," he said.
The CDC notice said the usual incubation period for the disease is 3 to 5 days, suggesting that anyone exposed around Sep 25 would have become ill by today. But in rare cases symptoms can take longer to appear, the agency said.
The United States had an average of about 124 cases of tularemia per year in the 1990s, most of them occurring in rural areas. Tick bites and handling of infected animals are the most common routes of infection, but people can also contract it from insect bites, eating or drinking contaminated food or water, or inhaling the bacteria, according to the CDC.
The disease can cause several different clinical syndromes, depending on the route of infection. The CDC notice said inhalation of the microbe is most likely to lead to pneumonic, oculoglandular, or oropharyngeal disease. Tularemia does not spread from person to person, and it can be effectively treated with antibiotics. But it can be fatal in some cases.
from WashPost:
The notification, which came from federal health officials, said that after the initial detection, subsequent tests "supported the presence of low levels" of the bacteria. However, officials also said they did not believe the findings posed a health problem.
"We pretty much feel there is no public health threat here," said Von Roebuck, a spokesman for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, noting that there have been no reports of tularemia, the disease that is caused by the bacteria. "We just wanted to alert the medical community to watch out for cases."
What Tularemia was doing there and why on that day is unknown. If you were present on that day and are experiencing symptoms you should talk to your doctor.
After seeing no cases and finding that the levels of tularemia in their samples were low, health officials at the CDC decided Friday night to release their findings in the event that there were cases, on the sunset of the incubation period, that weren't being detected, Roebuck said.
Pane said one theory is that tularemia bacteria, which occur naturally in soil, might have been kicked up by the thousands of feet stomping on the Mall grounds that day.
This seems to be reaching to me. Tularemia really ought not to be present on the mall, lying in the dust, in sucficent quantities to set off half a dozen sensors.
Tularemia, often called "rabbit fever" because small animals are often carriers in rural areas, was amassed by the U.S. military as a biological weapon in the 1960s.