Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Sunday Morning

Practical Precautions to Take to Avoid Anthrax Exposure

Aired October 21, 2001 - 08:43   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: The government is warning Americans not to panic in the face of the recent anthrax scare, even as the nation's Capitol buildings are being tested for the bacterium. But aren't there some realistic concerns about the anthrax?

CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is here to give us some basic dos and don'ts about anthrax, lessons we've been learning rather suddenly here.

Let me -- one of the questions that went through my mind, how long does anthrax, the spores, last?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, if they were on this table, right here in front of us, I asked someone that question. He said, "A very long time, if they were just on the tabletop." And I said, "Are your talking 10 years, 5 years?" and he couldn't give me an exact amount of time because I don't know if anyone's actually, you know, figured that out to the very details. But they can last for a very long time on a surface of a table or in a letter or something like that.

I mean, I got the feeling it could be certainly more than weeks, certainly more than months. Now another question is how does it last in your body? And I think that's also a little bit unclear, too. But these spores are very hardy, and can last for probably a while.

SAVIDGE: And when they try to decontaminate, do you sweep them up? Do you vacuum them up? What do you do?

COHEN: Oh, you would do a lot more than that. You wouldn't just sweep and vacuum. You would actually use certain chemicals in order to get rid of them. For example, a ventilation system would be a difficult place to get rid of them, because they're so many turns and nooks and crannies. But there are various chemicals, including formaldehyde, that do get rid of anthrax. There are also some chemicals that don't.

Again, it's a very hardy bacteria. And the reason why is that the spore is covered with this hard shell, like a seed. So it's not easy to get rid of.

SAVIDGE: We talk about personal precautions. Hand washing, can that go a long way if you fear, in some way, you've been contaminated? COHEN: Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you fear that you have opened a letter than contains anthrax, which is obviously an extremely unlikely scenario, given how many people live in this country, then yes, you absolutely need to wash your hands.

The advice that I heard from the CDC is that let's say you had a letter. You would not want to say, "Oh my gosh, I think there's anthrax in here," and hold it up say, "Gee, Martin, look." You know, you wouldn't want to share it around. You would just want to put it quietly down on a table, go wash your hands, leave the room, call 911.

Apparently, many of these cases, the CDC was saying, where the anthrax has been spread around, was that people saw powder and panicked, which is of course a natural thing to do, and actually sort of put their face in it, looked to see what it was, shared it with friends, said, "What do you think?" And that's just the wrong thing to do.

SAVIDGE: This may seem like a minor detail, but anti-bacterial soap? Does it matter, or any soap?

COHEN: I'm not sure that it really matters. I'm not sure that it really matters.

SAVIDGE: Well, most of what we've been talking about here is the anthrax on the skin, as opposed to the type that you would inhale, and that's important apparently survivability-wise?

COHEN: Oh, absolutely; huge difference. I mean, skin or cutaneous anthrax is not -- I wouldn't say common, but it is not a rare occurrence in this country. There have certainly been hundreds of cases over, let's say, the past 100 years. Often people who work on farms and who deal with animals who have the disease get skin anthrax. And they just take an antibiotic of one or another. And it really takes care of it.

I mean, it is not a highly deadly disease, if treated. As a matter of fact, it's a highly curable disease if treated.

Inhalation anthrax is a little bit different. And that's where someone has actually inhaled the spores and they get into the lungs. Those spores then sit in the body and they germinate. If you picture a seed kind of flowering. And that flower then produces toxins that can kill you.

If an antibiotic is not taken before it gets too far, in other words, before symptoms occur, then it can be deadly. However, as we've seen now, for example, with Ernesto Blanco in Florida, who is said to have anthrax, he's doing -- he's alive now because they did give him antibiotics early.

SAVIDGE: One of the things the government stressed is reacting quickly with antibiotics. Many people are so fearful, they start taking antibiotics before they even think they've been exposed. That's a problem. COHEN: Bad idea. Bad idea. I mean, it's just sort of a basic tenet of medicine: You don't want to be taking a medicine that you don't need. And if you haven't opened a letter or been in a room or been exposed to a letter that has anthrax in it, then you don't need to be taking it.

These antibiotics can have some pretty vicious side effects. For example, Cipro can cause several days of really horrible diarrhea, not garden-variety diarrhea, but just really horrible stuff that might even incapacitate you. You don't want to put yourself through that if you haven't even been exposed to anthrax.

In addition, you also would then be adding to antibiotic resistance in the community. That means that bugs would develop that would be resistant to antibiotics because so many people will have taken them. And you don't want to do that either.

SAVIDGE: All right, Elizabeth Cohen, thanks very much. As always, good advice. Appreciate it.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com