Letter at UO didn't contain anthrax spores.

Byline: TIM CHRISTIE and GREG BOLT The Register-Guard

A preliminary analysis of the powdery substance mailed to a University of Oregon physics professor indicated that it was "a pile of junk" and not potent, weapon-grade anthrax, Lane County's public health officer said Friday.

A final, authoritative determination will come in the next day or two after the state Public Health Laboratory in Portland tries to grow an anthrax culture from the material.

"If nothing grows, it means it's not anthrax," said the lab's Robert Sokolow.

But a preliminary analysis of the powder, done Friday morning under a microscope, indicates that the material isn't weaponized anthrax, said Dr. Sarah Hendrickson, Lane County public health officer.

"It means it's a nothing. It means it was a hoax," she said.

Weaponized or weapon-grade anthrax is defined as a high concentration of the organism in a small quantity of material, such as a powder.

"If there's anthrax there, it's in such a small amount it's not going to make people sick," said Martha deBroekert, a Lane County public health nurse. "They know there's not large enough numbers to be real concerned about, but they can't say it's not anthrax until they get final results."

Public health officials don't yet know what the material is, deBroekert said.

The incident prompted the FBI to take over the investigation pending the test results. Even though the preliminary test suggests the substance isn't anthrax, the FBI will wait until the more definitive cultures are complete before deciding whether to continue the investigation, said Beth Anne Steele, an agency spokeswoman in Portland.

"We need definitive results," Steele said. "Those results probably won't be back until early next week."

A UO office worker opened the letter, postmarked in Malaysia, on Thursday morning in a small office on the second floor of Willamette Hall, a science building on the UO campus. Officials said the letter contained threats and a white powder spilled out of the envelope.

The worker summoned professor Bernd Crasemann from an adjoining office, and he called campus public safety officers and Eugene police. The FBI subsequently became involved and determined that the letter posed a credible threat, which brought in the city fire department's hazardous materials squad to remove it.

Crasemann is the editor of a physics journal that publishes research articles from scientists around the world and has served on an international science committee. It was uncertain whether the letter was connected to the journal or Crasemann's work on the committee, and he couldn't be reached for comment.

The scare prompted one UO employee and five Eugene hazardous materials workers to go to McKenzie-Willamette Hospital on Thursday afternoon, asking to be tested for anthrax exposure.

Their arrival, in turn, prompted the hospital to lock down the emergency department for about 40 minutes. People in the waiting area were evacuated to another part of the hospital while the emergency department was decontaminated.

Physicians took nasal swabs from the UO employee and the hazardous material workers, but dispensed no antibiotics, said Tom Hambly, manager of the emergency department. The hospital will hold the nasal swabs, but doesn't plan to culture them for anthrax, he said.

Swabbing a nose isn't an accurate method for diagnosing anthrax in an individual because the results are somewhat hit-and-miss. But the procedure can be useful in testing a group of people to help determine the possible spread of exposure because the test sample is larger.

Hendrickson said a negative culture on a nasal swab doesn't rule out an exposure to anthrax. But people fearful of an exposure want something done.

"My sense is this is new and scary and it's unknown and people are justifiably anxious," she said.

Despite the anxiety, officials with campus police, the Eugene Fire Department and McKenzie-Willamette generally were pleased with how the situation was handled. Willamette Hall was never evacuated, and students and faculty went on with their work Thursday and Friday with little apparent disruption.

"Our training can always be improved, but I think we're headed in the right direction and I think we're as well-prepared as we can be," said Tom Fitzpatrick, director of the UO department of public safety.

A private firm was brought in late Thursday to clean the office and an adjoining room. By Friday morning, the only remaining signs of the incident were a handwritten note on the office saying it was closed and notices on the first-floor mailboxes advising they are out of service until further notice.

This was the first local incident that was credible enough to prompt any testing for a biohazard agent, said Paul Dammen, a Eugene district fire chief. Although the letter was opened at 9:30 a.m. and wasn't removed until midafternoon, Dammen said he was on the scene that morning.

The department had to wait for police and the FBI to determine whether it was a credible threat before taking action, he said. "Everything went smooth from our end," he said.

For hospital officials, it was the second time in three weeks that they've dealt with a potential anthrax exposure.

On Halloween, as a precaution, doctors took a nasal swab and prescribed antibiotics for a 2-year-old boy with flulike symptoms. The boy was brought in by his grandfather, who reported receiving a threatening letter with a white powder. The swab tested negative for anthrax.

Thursday's event "was a great opportunity for us to test the refinement we made in our bioterror response plan," Hambly said. "We didn't learn any big lessons. We just learned little things."

For instance, the plan didn't specify what to do with patients in the ER waiting room if it has to be shut down, as it was Thursday. They decided "on the fly" to send patients to the physical therapy department, he said, and that will be incorporated into the plan.

Bill Lehmann, customer relations manager for the U.S. Postal Service in Salem, said some sorting trays at the Gateway mail processing center were cleaned after the office was notified of the incident.