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US Military Accidentally Sent UK Laboratory Anthrax
It's been revealed that the US military accidentally sent a UK laboratory live anthrax samples.
It comes after US officials admitted last month that the country's military had mistakenly sent live anthrax bacteria to laboratories in nine US. states and a US. air base in South Korea, after apparently failing to properly inactivate the bacteria last year.
Anthrax can be used as a biological weapon - its microscopic spores being released without detection and placed in powders or even food.
The disease is fatal unless sufferers are rapidly given large doses of antibiotics.
The Pentagon however says in this instance there is "no known risk" to the general public and an "extremely low risk" to lab workers.
In all 66 labs in the US, the UK, Australia, South Korea and Canada have received samples, leading to accusations that the US military was guilty of failing in its obligations to protect civilians.
Investigators are trying to ascertain why the deadly spores weren't rendered harmless before being shipped out from a US Army base in Utah for scientific research.
During the Second World War British military scientists conducted feasibility studies on the use of anthrax as a weapon against the Nazis. The tests were carried out on the Scottish island of Gruinard, rendering it uninhabitable by mammals until decontamination in the late 1980s.
The effort to clean up the island followed an incident in which a package of soil from Gruinard, gathered by an unknown source and testing positive for anthrax, was sent to the military testing facility at Porton Down. Those behind the so-called "Operation Dark Harvest" claimed to have taken 140kg of soil from the island.
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