Replies

ANTHRAX, CATTLE GRAVESITES - RUSSIA (URALS)

105 anthrax-infected cattle graveyards have been located by Ural regional authorities

Ural public prosecutors have discovered 105 cattle graveyards that contain anthrax spores. According to a chief deputy Prosecutor of the Russian Federation, Yuriy Zolotov, altogether in the Ural federal region there are about 1100 neglected graveyards.

A cattle graveyard in Tobolsk needs special attention. It is located on the banks of the Irtish river, and if flooding occurs, there is a high risk of the river becoming infected with anthrax. Today the Irtish river is separated from the Tobolsk graveyard by 50 meters, a
distance that is shortening every year.

According to Deputy Prosecutor Zolotov, today this dangerous site is under security control, and serious work has begun to repair the banks of the Irtish.

I turned to my friend and the anthrax expert on Russia, Beniyamin Cherkasskiy, who generously replied as follows.

From: Beniyamin L. Cherkasskiy

I would like to provide some comments about the message you sent me regarding anthrax in the Ural region. Firstly I would like to point out that the Ural Federal region is approximately 1.8 million square km in area, with a human
population of about 12.5 million. The region consists of Kurgan, Sverdlovsk, Tumen, Chelyabinsk, Yamalo-Nenetskaya, and Hanti-Mansiyskaya national districts.

The entire region (north to south) has a history of anthrax, and therefore the discovery of numerous anthrax sites should not come as a surprise (in Russia, places with any history of anthrax are permanently labelled as 'anthrax sites'). I personally know the location of 2086 such sites in the Ural region. At 4 of these sites,
cases of animals being infected with anthrax were recorded between 1991 and 2000. In reality, the number of cattle gravesites is much higher, as there may be several such gravesites at any one of these anthrax sites. However, it is hard to say that there are positively identified anthrax spores in these gravesites -- as there have never
been such investigations into these sites.

The Tobolski gravesite is peculiar, but not because it is on the banks of the Irtish river. I am familiar with many such gravesites on the banks of various rivers and even at the bottom of artificial water reservoirs. However, my field studies show that such gravesites do not pose any serious epidemiological concern. The Tobolski gravesite is the result of activity at a nearby factory involved in
the production of veterinary prophylactic drugs, including vaccines against anthrax. Unfortunately despite sealing off the toxic waste storage facility with concrete, which provides isolation from the surrounding environment, the factory does not have any resources for the radical disinfection of the waste.

I hope that my comments have helped you better understand the anthrax situation in the Ural region.

Beniyamin Cherkasskiy
D/WHO CC of Zoonoses
Central Research Institute of Epidemiology
Moscow, Russia

Beniyamin has been converting the multitude of anthrax site reports into a single register for the whole country, so he knows what he is talking about. While such places are commonly regarded as risk sites, the reality is more of uncertainty and ignorance. While some sites will have viable spores in significant numbers, what determines this state of affairs and its probability are totally unknown. Logically it must depend on soil type -- anthrax persists in regions with alkaline soils with high calcium content and is absent from acid soil regions -- but also
presumably on whether necropsies were done on the affected carcasses before burial, and strain genotype group.

Decomposition in unopened carcasses will rapidly kill the vegetative cells as the pH falls. Burning and then burial of the ashes results in essentially zero risk. And even with sites that have spores, repeated sampling over the
years has shown some sites becoming 'apathogenic' from plasmid loss. Examination of such sites is needed, if only to rule out those that present no risk. I would not be surprised if the majority are harmless.