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Cache Valley prepares for the worst By
Will Bettmann Residents of Cache Valley looking for any guarantee that a biological or chemical terrorist attack couldn't occur in the valley may be disappointed. Nearly everyone here who has looked extensively into the possibility echoes what officials on a national level are saying -- that it is almost impossible to completely defend against such an attack. Dr. John Bailey, director of the Bear River Health Department (which encompasses Cache County) says the issue comes down to allocation of limited funds. "To achieve 100 percent protection of our municipal water source, for example, we'd have to put an unscalable fence around every water source, and have someone patrol the fence 24/7," Bailey says. "The question becomes, at what cost and how far are you going to go to protect against a very distant possibility? We have trouble enough doing core public health services, the day to day things, with the funding we get." He says the health department, as part of its normal operations, is already doing many of the things that would prevent a bioterrorism attack, such as making sure municipal water systems are secure and monitoring them regularly. Keith Larsen, an environmental health scientist with the health department, agrees with Bailey that the department is already doing many of the things necessary to foil an attack. Larsen says an attempt to sicken people through water is unlikely because most water systems including Cache Valley's are fairly secure -- filtered, chlorinated or both -- and the amount of toxin or biological agent a terrorist would need to put in the water to have any significant effect on the population would be prohibitive in most cases. Larsen believes Cache Valley has a good emergency response team. As part of the HazMat (hazardous materials) team, he has responded to a number of situations, including an anthrax scare a few years ago when someone falsely reported they had placed anthrax in a milk bottle. In that case a number of agencies, including the FBI and the Utah Department of Health, worked together quickly to resolve the situation, he says. Larsen says Cache Valley is part of the statewide Health Alert Network, a federally funded program designed to help cities and counties notify health officials and respond to a public health emergency as quickly as possible. "You hope it doesn't happen, but I suppose it could," Larsen says. "We're doing everything we can to prepare for it." Larsen's faith in the system is not generally shared by those working at the national level. An article in Time magazine on Oct. 8 quoted a report from the General Accounting Office which said the "federal bioterrorism defense is so chaotic the agencies can't even agree which threats to worry about." Two particular threats that have received a lot of coverage are smallpox and anthrax. Smallpox is a highly contagious virus, and since 1972 Americans have not been inoculated against it. Health officials say the efficacy of the vaccination decreases over time, so even those who were inoculated before 1972 are probably no longer protected. Although the fatality rate for those infected with smallpox is between 25 and 30 percent, it can be spread at an alarming rate. According to an article on the Center for Disease Control website,which is currently devoted almost entirely to bioterrorism, during an outbreak in Yugoslavia in 1972 caused by one infected man, 175 people contracted smallpox and 35 died, 20 million people were vaccinated, and the country was virtually locked down for a couple of weeks. The article goes on to note that the United States (as of 1998) possessed only about 15 million doses of smallpox vaccine. That number is not significantly higher in 2001. Professor K.K. Li of USU's biology department says he is concerned about the possibility of terrorists infecting themselves with a disease and then attempting to spread the disease. To illustrate the example of something that can be used for both good and evil, Li brought up dynamite, which was created by Alfred Nobel (for whom the Nobel prize is named) with the intention of lessening miners' work load, and only later used for destructive purposes. "When most scientists, ethical scientists, study microbes, our intention is to discover how microbes cause disease so we can prevent or treat disease," Li says. "Sometimes, people can use that information in the wrong way." Li says scientists are one of the front lines of defense in the war against bioterrorism because they can provide information to the public and work on early detection systems for deadly germs, among other things. Anthax has received even more media coverage than smallpox, with news last Friday that a fourth person, a woman in New York, had been infected (although with a less virulent strain). The sudden appearance of a disease last seen in America in 1976 has spawned countless articles in newspapers and on the Internet, such as "Vaccinations against bioterror attacks?" and"Your medicine cabinet and the war on terrorism," all seeking to provide information to a jittery American public. Anthrax is a bacteria that is fairly common in the soil and in livestock throughout the world. It is often found in its dormant "spore" stage, although once the spore is ingested it reverts to its live bacterial form. Once ingested, anthrax is thought to be fatal in about 90 percent of its cases. A vaccination for the bacteria does exist, but so far only military personnel in this country have received it. Anthrax is not contagious -- that is, it is not spread from person to person; one must inhale the spores directly -- and it can be treated with antibiotics if it is discovered in the early stages of infection. Li says early detection may be one area scientists can be of particular use. "Any USU student who's had Intro to Microbiology could recognize anthrax," Li said. "I'm quite sure if my colleagues and I were asked to help, we would do that in any way we could." Li says some measures people were taking, such as buying gas masks, would probably not be helpful in the unlikely event of a bioterrorist attack. He says gas masks are effective only if they're worn prior to any exposure, and in such an attack, it is unlikely people will know they've been exposed. The filters on gas masks only work for certain chemicals, such as mustard gas, and are completely ineffective against many biological agents, he adds. Another type of attack Cache Valley could face is one under the broad heading of agroterrorism. In this instance, terrorists could try to poison a food source, such as a food production facility, or simply try to damage America economically by introducing a destructive crop virus or a livestock disease, such as the highly contagious hoof and mouth disease. A New York Times article on Oct. 11 led with this sentence: "The nation's food supply is vulnerable to terrorist attack because of the government's fragmented inspection system, congressional investigators say." DeeVon Bailey, a professor in the economics department and an extension economist, says the United States has the safest food supply in the world and that there is no cause for panic. "I'm not overly concerned," Bailey says. "That doesn't mean there couldn't be a problem, but I think it'll be a small one. We're all just playing the odds with all of our activities each day." Bailey adds that a scenario in which livestock are infected with disease is more likely, and "probably something we need to worry about a bit." For most Americans right now, there seems to be no shortage of such worries.
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