EWING, N.J. – About 600 people who picked up mail and packages at a postal processing facility where anthrax was found should take antibiotics, state health officials said Saturday.
The recommendation applies mainly to workers from several hundred firms who pick up or drop off mail from nonpublic areas at the Hamilton Township facility, the source of three anthrax-tainted letters sent to New York and Washington.
At least five New Jersey postal workers have confirmed or suspected cases of the disease. A Trenton firefighter also was hospitalized Saturday for a possible case of inhalation anthrax.
Also Saturday, officials closed the Princeton post office after a single anthrax spore was found in a colony of several types of bacteria on a mail bin, health department spokesman Tom Slater said.
The 60 to 70 workers there do not need antibiotics because the level of contamination was minuscule, said state Health Commissioner George DiFerdinando. But he said workers will get help in obtaining antibiotics if they choose to be treated.
``Since we consider the single colony to be an insignificant amount, we don't believe the benefit of treating them at this time is worth the risk of side effects to those people,'' he said.
The health commissioner said test results from a third postal facility, the West Trenton post office in Ewing, were negative. A decision on reopening that facility would likely be made Sunday, he said.
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