Mumbai jittery over anthrax fears

The threat of anthrax around the world has sent jitters among the city's residents with several cases of people receiving suspicious-looking letters that have been taken over by the police for analysis.

On Monday, 300 staff at the corporate office of Aarti Industries in north-east Mulund-Goregaon Link Road rushed out of their offices due to the threat of anthrax after the company received by courier a yellowish powder inside a letter written in Arabic from L. Syyed & Co, Cairo, Egypt.

The police and researchers from the Haffkine Institute of Immunology, the only one of its kind in the city, were called immediately.

Says the Institute's Head of the Bacteriology Department, Dr S.V. Gadre, who visited the place: "Though, in my opinion, the powder seemed too heavy to be anthrax, it has been taken for testing and we have advised the entire office to be disinfected and the staff prescribed antibiotics."

The company answers trade inquiries for pharmaceutical formulations.

The saving grace is that so far there has been no case of anthrax infection being reported in the city and it seems that all these envelopes containing some kind of white powder are being sent by pranksters.

"On Monday, the police handled over 14 envelopes containing some kind of powder to us but today it has come down to just four, an indication that some people still want to play mischief," says Gadre.

The Indian Express office in Pune received an envelope addressed to the editor containing white powder.

The journalists handed over the envelope, that was posted in Pune itself, to the police who took the mail to Sasoon Hospital for analysis where it was tested to be just kitchen salt mixed with talcum powder.

With too many pranks, the Haffkine Institute plans to confine itself to testing only letters that come to sensitive places like the consulates of Israel and the United States.

Last week, two suspiciously-looking envelopes were brought to the Institute and both were harmless, one containing share certificates which happened to be posted from the U.S. and did not have the sender's address while the other was an application to a post-graduate course in the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) from a candidate in Iran.

All this is an overreaction and a fear complex and that is why Gadre suggests that anyone receiving any suspicious mail should hand over the envelope directly to the police and if necessary take a course of antibiotics, to allay the psychological fear.

"There is no way that any one can just produce the anthrax bacillus which require the tedious efforts of several scientists. Moreover, the spores tend to fall to the ground and has to be mixed with certain powders, which is a complicated technique, to keep it afloat."

The final word on whether a substance is truly anthrax has to be decided by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in Gwalior even as various bodies like the National Institute of Virology, Pune's Armed Forces Medical College, Haffkine Institute and the DRDO will soon decide on the role each one should assume in case of emergencies.

"In determining whether a substance contains anthrax, we follow the classical method which is time-consuming whilst the DRDO has the latest method and equipment for this purpose," says Gadre.