Although the possibility of the anthrax infection reaching Dartmouth remains minimal, College officials are taking extra precautions in the face of this deadly threat.
Trying to put community members at ease about the recent anthrax outbreak, Director of College Health Services Dr. John Turco sent out a campus-wide e-mail yesterday to address the possibility of an anthrax contamination. He has also scheduled a meeting tomorrow to discuss mail handling concerns.
According to Turco, Dartmouth is no more vulnerable to an attack than any other college, and the actual risk of an outbreak on campus is very small. He said he feels it is prudent, however, for individuals to be aware of the dangers and know how to act if they receive suspicious mail.
The message outlined ways to recognize potentially threatening mail and the appropriate steps to take if it is received. Turco's e-mail to the community also provided emergency contact numbers and websites containing information about anthrax and other biological threats.
Nationwide, there have been four people diagnosed with Anthrax since Oct. 1, and authorities have responded to over 2,300 reports of unusual substances. At Dartmouth, there have not been incidents involving contaminated mail.
According to the Center for Disease Control, Anthrax infections are caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. The disease is most common in hoofed animals, but it can also infect humans through inhalation, ingestion or lesions in the skin.
The disease is most deadly in its respiratory form. Symptoms appear within seven days of exposure and initially resemble the common cold -- later developing into severe breathing problems and shock.
The cutaneous form of anthrax is less serious, marked by boil-like lesions that then form an ulcer with a black center. This type of infection responds well to antibiotics. Anthrax can also be contracted through contaminated food, but no such cases have been reported among the recent outbreaks.
Turco said that in the event of an infection, the antibiotics are available here to treat it. A vaccine is also available, but it consists of five or six shots and is only recommended if there is a significantly high risk of coming in contract with the disease.
While the threat of biological terrorism is minimal in Hanover, the effects of recent outbreaks could be far-reaching.
"I think people have not realized yet that this war has just taken a real turn," Government Professor Daryl Press said. "I can't remember any other time when the U.S. homeland was hit by attacks using lethal biological weapons.
"I don't know how much it will escalate, but this war is much more serious and much more dangerous than we realized," Press continued.
Press, who has studied the threats faced by American military from biological and chemical weapons, said in the hands of relatively unsophisticated terrorists, anthrax poses no more of a threat than a bomb.
"The first problem with Anthrax is converting it into a form that can be used to infect humans," Press said. "It is vulnerable to light and temperature, and it must make spores to survive. Once it has formed spores that are the right size to infect humans, there is the problem of distributing it in a way that can infect many people."
For a large number of people to be exposed, the spores must be spread relatively evenly over a large area, Press said. The present attacks, which have exposed a small number of people, do not seem to have mass casualties as their goal.
"Whoever has been spreading this has done it in a very unsophisticated way," Press said. "It is very hard to spread it effectively."
He believes that even a well-organized terrorist group like Al-Qaeda probably could not manufacture an anthrax strain that would inflict significant casualties. The fear is that such groups could have access to far more dangerous, Russian-developed bacteria.
"The effects of a sophisticated attack could be catastrophic," Press said. He is not worried, though, about an incident at Dartmouth.
"Everyone should follow safety precautions, but I'm not concerned, living in Hanover," he said.
