I wonder if this mailbox was in or near the Princeton University microbiology department.
Mercer County resident contracts anthrax in state's first non-postal case
By JEAN SU
Princetonian Staff Writer
A 51-year-old woman living in Mercer County, N.J., left a local hospital Oct. 28 after being treated for a case of skin anthrax.
The woman remains the only non-postal worker to have contracted the bacteria in New Jersey.
Though state health officials are withholding the victim's name, one official, who wished to remain anonymous, released information on the woman's hospital testing.
A lesion that developed on the woman's forehead originally spurred her to undergo analysis. "She initially tested negative for anthrax," the official explained. The hospital diagnosed her with a different ailment and gave her antibiotics.
"Anthrax tests can be somewhat inaccurate," Hamilton Township's mayoral aide Richard McClellan said. "They have their positive aspects and flaws."
A biopsy later confirmed that the woman had been wrongly diagnosed and had contracted skin anthrax.
Because time passed since her first test, the woman had no recollection of where she could have contracted the bacteria, throwing investigators off any leads they had.
Though the public and several news sources have speculated that the victim was exposed to anthrax through mail delivered by the United States Postal Service, officials denied this claim due to lack of evidence.
"We will probably never know [the source of her exposure]," McClellan said. "Investigators haven't found contamination in either site [her home or office]."
FBI investigators, according to McClellan, tested the victim's home, work place and the group of condominium offices surrounding hers — including U.S. Rep. Chris Smith's district office — for the presence of the bacteria. They did not find a trace of anthrax at any of these sites.
In an interview with a CNN correspondent Wednesday, Smith said he "did not believe he had been the target of any tainted letters."
The reasons why she would be targeted are overshadowed by a more significant and urgent question: the means by which she contracted anthrax. "Officials have no idea about a.) how she got sick and b.) whether it was blind luck that she was three doors down from Chris Smith," McClellan said.
The 16th American to contract anthrax, the woman "is expected to fully recover," the health official said.