About 200 employees and 100 visitors were evacuated from the Jefferson County Courthouse in Hillsboro on Monday as a precaution because a mailroom employee was found to have a lesion on her abdomen.
County Commissioner Ed Kemp, who also is the county's acting director of emergency services, said there was no reason to believe that she or anyone there has anthrax. Health officials said they did not believe that she was infected.
Kemp said the courthouse would reopen today.
In another anthrax-related scare, a yellowish powder found inside a letter Sunday morning at the main post office in downtown St. Louis tested negative for anthrax, spokeswoman JoAnne Hartmann said Monday.
The substance was in an unsealed envelope with no return address that had been mailed from a European country, a source close to the case said. It was addressed to CNN on North Grand Boulevard. There is no CNN office there or anywhere in St. Louis.
In Jefferson County, the courthouse was closed about 1 p.m., and a hazardous materials team was put on standby after the woman's personal doctor told her that he could not immediately determine whethr she had a spider bite or cutaneous (skin) anthrax.
Another physician, Dr. Thomas Hartmann of the emergency room at St. Anthony's Medical Center in south St. Louis County, said it appeared to be an insect bite. But Hartmann said both the woman and a co-worker in the mailroom had been tested for anthrax and would be treated with antibiotics as a precaution.
"I think the odds of anything turning up positive is extremely remote," Hartmann said. "We feel that the courthouse can safely reopen."