3 stop anthrax antibiotics when trailer tests negative

11/17/2001

LIMA, Ohio - Three local men have been taken off antibiotics to fight exposure to anthrax after a second round of laboratory tests came back negative on a trailer that arrived here from the Brentwood Post Office in Washington.

Russ Decker, Allen County's emergency management director; Steve Hoverman, a county sheriff's captain, and Harry Shaffer, a microbiologist for Titan Scan Technologies, have been taking Cipro since Oct. 26 when they discovered cargo inside a trailer had not been packaged properly and some plastic bags full of mail had torn in transit.

That trailer was the first to arrive in Lima. Since that time, Mr. Decker said more than 20 truckloads of properly packaged mail has been sterilized at the Titan facility and shipped back to Washington.

Titan uses the same method to sterilize its mail as it does to sterilize medical equipment.