Authorities in the Philippines quarantined 12 postal workers believed to have handled an envelope potentially containing anthrax, ABS-CBN News reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 3).
Officials have not yet determined whether any lethal agent was actually inside the envelope, which was addressed to the U.S. Embassy in Manila and mailed from Houston, Texas. Roughly 80 U.S. embassies around the world have received powder-filled envelopes since September.
The mailing was first discovered by a U.S. employee retrieving letters from the embassy's box at the Manila Post Office. FBI officials and hazardous material experts quickly collected the envelope and transferred it to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine at Alabang for analysis.
The hazardous material crew decontaminated the post office box area and inspected the section's employees. The 12 workers were quarantined as a precaution, but other employees at the mail facility have expressed concern that they might also have handled the envelope (Maan Macapagal, ABS-CBN News, Jan. 8).