The Sky-High Price of Sniffing Out Anthrax

In September 2001, with the just-destroyed World Trade Center still smoldering, letters containing anthrax spores started showing up in the mailrooms of major media companies in New York and elsewhere. It took federal authorities two weeks to identify the bioterrorism attack that ultimately killed five people and sickened 17 others. The government’s come a long way since then, yet it could go farther still—if Congress decides if the investment is worth it.

Right now the Department of Homeland Security uses 600 secret air filters to detect lethal pathogens. Local health officials in the roughly 30 cities that have the filters must manually retrieve them every day and cart them back to labs for testing. So if terrorists released something deadly into the air, it could take about 36 hours depending on the time of the attack before the toxin is identified. That would be enough time for legions of people to get sick or die before officials could react.