Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Ruppersberger, welcome.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. While the focus on today's hearing is on the Wallingford, CT incident and the June 2 rollout of detection test sites across the country, I have particular interest in this topic.

I represent the Baltimore area. The Baltimore Distribution Center has been the first and only pilot test site to date. Baltimore has been running the Bioagent Detection System [BDS], since June 2002. Using state-of-the-art technology, there have been no positives since the pilot program began and their success has allowed for the rollout to remain on schedule. My understanding of the issue goes beyond the Baltimore facility. The pilot system has been built by Northrup Grumman and Davis Industries, which are both in my district, and I have visited those manufacturing areas and been briefed on that, and they are building systems now for 14 test sites throughout the country.

The Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Army Engineers and John Hopkins have all played a vital role in this technology. We have learned so much in the last year and a half about bioterrorism and how to apply technological advances to a new line front defense workers like the Postal Service, and I look forward to the testimony today and learning more about where we need to go.

Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

I'm just looking. We don't have enough chairs for folks. I'm interested in maybe having the second panelists, if you don't mind, use the first three chairs on either side, and that will free up some chairs. So if some of the second panelists could just sit up front here, we'd appreciate that. Thank you very much, and that frees up a few chairs if someone wants to grab them.

OK.

We're going to hear first from Dr. Rhodes and then Dr. Hamilton and then Colonel Henchal. The way we do it is, we do the 5-minute rule, and we rollover the clock. I assume you don't take the second full 5 minutes, if you could stop a minute or two into your second round, that would be helpful. So you might have to summarize, and obviously, so we are all set.

Dr. Rhodes.

STATEMENTS OF DR. KEITH RHODES, CHIEF TECHNOLOGIST, CENTER FOR TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING, APPLIED RESEARCH AND METHODS, ACCOMPANIED BY BERNARD UNGAR, DIRECTOR PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE ISSUES; DR. JACK MELLING, FORMER HEAD UK CENTER APPLIED MICROBIOLOGY AND RESEARCH; DR. ROBERT G. HAMILTON, DIRECTOR, JOHN HOPKINS, ACCOMPANIED BY BARRY SKOLNICK; AND COLONEL ERIK A. HENCHAL, COMMANDER, U.S. ARMY MEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES, ACCOMPANIED BY DR. GEORGE LUDWIG

Dr. RHODES. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, I'm Keith Rhodes, GAO Chief Technologist and the Director of the Center for Technology and Engineering

Mr. SHAYS. I'm going to ask you to talk into the silver mic. See if we can hear you better.

Dr. RHODES. I'm Keith Rhodes, GAO, Chief Technologist and Director of GAO Center for Technology and Engineering. I'm accompanied by Bernie Ungar, Director for Postal Issues in the Physical Infrastructure Team and Dr. Jack Melling, former head of the UK Center for Applied Microbiology and Research.

We are pleased to be here today to present our findings on anthrax testing conducted by the Postal Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the Southern Connecticut Processing and Distribution Center in Wallingford, CT.

As you know in September and October 2001, four letters containing bacillus anthracis spores were mailed to news media personnel and congressional officials. As a result, the letters contaminated numerous postal facilities and exposed several postal workers to anthrax. Some of the workers became sick, with two dying of inhalation anthrax. Three other people also died from inhalation anthrax, including an elderly woman in Connecticut, a postal customer. After contamination was found in the Wallingford facility, a union official raised concerns regarding how postal managers communicated test results to workers. We have issued a report in this regard, the recommendations of which are included in this testimony.

Even though our analysis of the Wallingford incident is only one part of the larger study we are doing for you, it gives unique insight into the lessons that need to be learned from the response of the Federal Government, State health departments and the Postal Service to the anthrax attacks.

The Wallingford facility was unique in that it did not directly handle the anthrax letters. Rather, it was cross-contaminated by them, with the largest number of spores being found in a sample collected from a single machine. There was, however, evidence that the spores had become air borne since small numbers of spores were found in elevated areas, more than 20 feet above the contaminated machine.

In addition, while other facilities had workers and customers who suffered from either cutaneous or inhalation anthrax, the death of a postal customer served by the Wallingford facility underlines the insidious nature of anthrax and the difficulty in determining a lethal dose, since the elderly Connecticut woman died from anthrax when no evidence of anthrax could be found in either her home or places she frequented.

To compound this, a single spore was found on a letter received by another postal customer in the community, and yet, no other illnesses or deaths in the community were reported.

Further, the Wallingford facility was outside the predictive analysis that the Postal Service performed to determine the impact on the rest of the postal distribution network of the contaminated letters processed through facilities in Washington, DC, and Trenton, NJ.

The unpredictability of both the lethality of anthrax and the route that contaminated mail might take, makes it extremely difficult to establish the health risks associated with a release of a biological agent such as anthrax inside a facility that serves the pub

This difficulty underscores the need for a standardized and aggressive response, as well as forward planning to protect facility workers and the public should an anthrax attack occur again.

As you know, determining whether or not a facility is contaminated with anthrax is critical. This is dependent upon one, the methods used for sampling, two, the locations from which samples were collected, and three, how many samples were collected.

The Postal Service's testing of the Wallingford facility originally used the dry swab method for sample collection and found no anthrax. After the death of the elderly Connecticut woman on November 21, 2001, the CDC and the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry used targeted sampling, focusing on the mail sorting machines and different sampling methods, wet wipes and HEPA vacuums. They also collected more than three times the number of samples previously collected by the Postal Service and found contamination in some of the samples.

This inability to initially find anthrax contamination shows that either qualitative, that is positive or negative, or quantitative, test results from a qualified laboratory cannot be used to establish a health risk. Positive results only show whether contamination is present in the samples collected. However, negative results do not necessarily mean that a facility is free from contamination. Quantitative test results only show the extent of contamination in the specific sample found to be positive, not how much anthrax is present in the facility.

For example, 3 million anthrax spores were found on one machine in Wallingford. However, with regard to the health risk to an individual, although this number was significantly higher than what was considered historically to be a lethal dose for an individual, 8,000 to 10,000 spores, CDC did not know how to extrapolate the amount in a sample to a person's risk for inhalation anthrax. The Environmental Protection Agency recently reported that in order to perform credible risk assessment, it is essential to identify the minimum number of spores needed to cause inhalation and cutaneous anthrax.

Nevertheless, there is now a consensus among the experts that a few spores could be harmful to a susceptible individual as may have been the case in the death of the Connecticut woman.

Public health response is most effective and efficient when it is proactive. When it focuses on prevention, rather on consequence management. Thus, the Wallingford incident illustrates the challenges facing the Federal Government, the State health departments, the network of diagnostic laboratories and those companies that serve the general public, including the Postal Service. The challenge can be summed up in one question. Is it safe?

This is what everyone asked during the fall of 2001 and this is what everyone is trying to answer to this day. Unfortunately, the best answer anyone can give is, it is probably safe. Once a building has been contaminated, one can never say there is no risk; but there can be a low risk but all those who are trying to protect the public health must realize that they are defining the risk level for others. In this case the postal workers as well as the general public.

The impact of additional anthrax cases could result in illness or loss of life, as well as loss of confidence in the Nation's postal system. Further, even though the health risk is probably low, it is uncertain. We are, therefore, recommending that the Postmaster General, in consultation with CDC, EPA, OSHA, as well as any other relevant agencies and postal unions, for those facilities that were deemed free of anthrax spores based solely on a single negative sampling result, that they: One, reassess the risk level for postal workers at those facilities and the general public served by those facilities; two, reconsider the advisability of retesting those facilities, employing the most effective sampling methods and procedures; and three, communicate to the postal workers and the general public the results of the assessment of health risk, the advisability of retesting, the rationale for these decisions and other relevant information that may be helpful regarding the health of the postal workers and the general public.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes our statement. My colleagues and I will be happy to answer any questions you or members of the subcommittee have.

[NOTE.-The GAO report entitled, "U.S. Postal Service, Better Guidance is Needed to Improve Communication Should Anthrax Contamination Occur in the Future," may be found in subcommittee files.]

[The prepared statement of Dr. Rhodes follows:]