Sverdlovsk

Sverdlovsk Anthrax Outbreak of 1979
(see also: Sverdlovsk Correspondence) The 1979 outbreak of anthrax in the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk, policy responses in the US and the Soviet Union, US intelligence assessments and the independent onsite investigations of 1992 and 1993 that Dr. Meselson led and which conclusively demonstrated the cause of the outbreak to be an aerosol release from a military biological facility in Sverdlovsk, contrary to the Soviet explanation that it was a natural outbreak.

In April and May 1979, an unusual anthrax epidemic occurred in Sverdlovsk, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Soviet officials attributed it to consumption of contaminated meat. U.S. agencies attributed it to inhalation of spores accidentally released at a military microbiology facility in the city. Epidemiological data show that most victims worked or lived in a narrow zone extending from the military facility to the southern city limit. Farther south, livestock died of anthrax along the zone's extended axis. The zone paralleled the northerly wind that prevailed shortly before the outbreak. It is concluded that the escape of an aerosol of anthrax pathogen at the military facility caused the outbreak.
-- "The Sverdlovsk Anthrax Outbreak of 1979", with Jeanne Guillemin, Martin Hugh-Jones, Alexander Langmuir, Ilona Popova, Alexis Shelokov, and Olga Yampolskaya, Science, 18 November 1994, Vol. 266, pp 1202-1208.

Jeanne Guillemin-Meselson interview with Russian family and interpreter Irina Belaeva, 1992.

Also see Anthrax:The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak by Jeanne Guillemin

Sverdlovsk Anthrax Outbreak