Few details were revealed about the incident after army facility in Utah recently sent anthrax to 11 US states, as well as South Korean military base

Pentagon anthrax blunder reveals 'chain of errors' in government lab protocols Read more

The Pentagon said on Friday the army may have mistakenly sent live anthrax to a laboratory in Australia in 2008, in addition to the suspected live anthrax it sent this year to more than a dozen labs in the US and South Korea.

The US military said it discovered even more suspected shipments of live anthrax than previously thought, both within America and abroad, and ordered a sweeping review of practices meant to inactivate the bacteria.

The Pentagon said a total of 11 states, two more than it first acknowledged, received “suspect samples”, as did Australia and South Korea. It had previously only identified a foreign shipment to a US air base south of Seoul.



“There is no known risk to the general public and an extremely low risk to lab workers,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

But in a sign the Pentagon was still coming to grips with the extent of the problem, it advised all laboratories for now to stop working with any “inactive” samples sent from the Defense Department.

Details of the Australia case were sketchy, but it suggested more extensive flaws in procedures used by the army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah to ensure that anthrax samples were made fully inert before shipping them to labs.

Dugway, in a desolate stretch of the Utah desert, has been testing chemical weapons since it opened in 1942.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said suspect samples from Dugway had been sent to 18 labs in the US and a military base in South Korea. CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said the agency was testing to see which ones were live.

The results were coming in slowly, she said, and the first full set of findings was not expected until next week. It was unclear on Friday whether the Pentagon would take additional steps to investigate on its own or review Dugway’s procedures.

A Wisconsin commercial laboratory, meanwhile, confirmed on Friday it was among the labs that received live anthrax spores last week. BBI Detection of Madison, which employs fewer than 20 people, remains partially closed.

No employees have fallen sick or are in danger, and there is no danger to the public, said Jackie Lustig, a spokeswoman for Massachusetts-based Alere, which owns BBI.

CDC spokesman Jason McDonald said four people at labs in Delaware, Texas and Wisconsin were recommended to get antibiotics as a precaution, although they were not sick. About two dozen people were being treated for possible exposure at Osan Air Base in South Korea.