Anthrax found in four New Jersey postal facilities

Associated Press WriterTRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- Anthrax has been found at four New Jersey post offices that send mail to the processing center where contaminated letters were sent to Washington and New York, The Associated Press learned Friday.

Tests found traces of anthrax spores in all four of the small satellite offices, a state official said on condition of anonymity. A news conference was scheduled for later Friday to provide details.

The post offices are in Rocky Hill, Princeton Borough, Trenton and Jackson Township, the source said. Fifteen samples were taken at each of the post offices; one sample from each came back positive.

All four sent mail to the regional processing center in Hamilton that handles mail from 46 smaller post offices across central New Jersey.

Authorities say three tainted letters came through the Hamilton plant on their way to the Washington office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and to the New York offices of NBC and the New York Post.

The source of the anthrax has been the subject of a massive criminal investigation. The nation's anthrax outbreak has killed four people and infected more than a dozen others, including five in New Jersey.

Earlier tests found anthrax at the Hamilton plant and post offices in Princeton and Bellmawr. The Hamilton office remains closed.

Acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco ordered the samples after an accountant who works near the Hamilton plant tested positive for skin anthrax. The woman was the first person in New Jersey to contract the disease who was not a postal worker.

The news came as a postal workers in New York lost a court battle to shut down a huge processing facility where anthrax was found on several machines.

And late Thursday, workers returned to an anthrax-contaminated postal facility in Bellmawr, 30 miles southwest of Trenton, after Postal Service officials agreed to continue testing for spores at the plant.

The Bellmawr facility serves 159 local post offices and delivers mail to 1.1 million locations in southern New Jersey and parts of Delaware.