USFK mum for anthrax tests here

Concerns grew at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, Thursday after United States Forces Korea announced that an investigation into potential exposure to anthrax is underway. This followed a statement by the Pentagon that a U.S. military lab in Utah accidently shipped at least one live sample of anthrax bacterium to South Korea. It added that no-one has so far shown any signs of infection. / Yonhap

By Jun Ji-hye

Anthrax bacteria / AP-Yonhap

Questions have arisen about why United States Forces Korea (USFK) has established a lab at Osan Air Base, south of Seoul, and carried out anthrax culture experiments there.

The existence of the lab, believed to be on operation for a considerable amount of time, became known to the public on Thursday after the U.S. Department of Defense announced mistakes in anthrax delivery.

It said that a U.S. military lab in Dugway, Utah, accidently shipped at least one sample of live anthrax to labs in nine states across the country, as well as to that of USFK.

In a separate press release, the USFK said 22 people at the air base may have been exposed to a suspected sample of anthrax during training Wednesday, but none of them have shown any symptoms of infection.

Though the USFK stressed, “There is no risk to the public,” the situation was treated as dangerous enough that it could threaten the lives of service members at the base and civilians, as well as lab personnel.

USFK did not provide any detailed explanation about the purpose of those experiments. It also refused to reveal when the lab was set up at the air base.

What USFK merely said was, “The training involved routine laboratory protocols that are in line with normal handling procedures.”

It added that the sample, which was expected to be inert and harmless, was used in a training laboratory environment by laboratory personnel at the Osan base involved in the Joint USFK Portal and Integrated Threat Recognition Program.

After it was discovered the bacteria might not be an inert training sample as expected, emergency response personnel from the 51st Fighter Wing destroyed the sample in a self-contained contingency facility, it said.

With such an insufficient explanation about the experiments, defense observers here are presenting a number of theories, mindful of the fact that anthrax has been used as a weapon around the world for nearly a century.

Some say the U.S. may have conducted the experiments to improve preventive vaccines against anthrax, while others say Washington may have pushed for securing biochemical weapons in preparation for contingencies on the Korean Peninsula. Such speculation came as North Korea, which began mass-production of biochemical weapons in 1980, is believed to possess 2,500 to 5,000 tons of such weapons.

In Washington, Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said his department is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in their investigation into the “inadvertent transfer of samples.”

The military lab in Utah was working as part of Pentagon efforts to develop a field-based test to identify biological threats in the environment, Warren said, adding that the department “has stopped the shipment of this material from its labs pending completion of the investigation.”

The CDC noted that biological agents and toxins have been designated as Tier 1 because they present the greatest risk of deliberate misuse with significant potential for mass casualties or devastating effects to the critical infrastructure.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the mortality rates from anthrax vary depending on exposure, but inhalation anthrax has a fatality rate of 80 percent or higher.

The U.S. military and British Army personnel are routinely vaccinated against anthrax prior to active service in places where biological attacks are considered a threat.

However, an official of the Seoul’s Ministry of National Defense said the South Korean military has yet to secure preventive vaccines against anthrax, leaving room for controversy.

The ministry explained that it has ciprofloxacin and doxycycline which are used for antibiotic treatment of anthrax, adding that the Korea CDC has been developing preventive vaccines with a goal of doing so by next year.

Follow Jun Ji-hye on Twitter @TheKopJihye