Pentagon mistakenly ships live anthrax to labs and overseas U.S. base

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it’s investigating what the Pentagon calls an inadvertent shipment of live anthrax spores to government and commercial laboratories.

Those labs had expected to receive dead spores.

The CDC says, right now, it does not suspect there’s a risk to the general public.

However, a U.S. official says four people in three commercial labs worked with the suspect anthrax samples and the CDC has recommended they be provided preventive treatment. The official was not authorized to discuss the details because they involved non-government lab employees, and so spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Pentagon says the suspected live anthrax samples were shipped from Dugway Proving Ground, an Army facility in Utah, using a commercial delivery service. Col. Steve Warren says the government has confirmed a lab in Maryland received live spores, while it’s suspected that labs in as many as eight other states may have been sent live spores. Those states are Texas, Wisconsin, Delaware, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, California and Virginia.

Warren say another anthrax sample was sent to a U.S. military lab in South Korea, but no personnel there have shown signs of exposure and the sample has been destroyed.