BIOTERRORISM: Anthrax, also known as 'wool-sorter's disease'

Bob Cudmore:  November 29, 2010
Anthrax — thrust into the news after the 2001 attacks as a bioterrorism threat — was feared during the heyday of Mohawk Valley carpet and leather mills.
Anthrax was called “wool-sorter’s disease.” The disease can infect sheep, and anthrax spores can remain in wool.
Carpets woven in Amsterdam until production ceased in 1968 generally were made from wool. A recent column noted that wool often was shipped to Amsterdam from foreign lands.
“Any time you got a scratch in the mill, or a cut, or any kind of a wound at all you had to report it immediately,” said the late Mohawk Carpet union leader Tony Murdico of Amsterdam in an interview in 2000. “Because anthrax travels around the mill where there’s wool, see. And it can kill you in two days.”
As Murdico pointed out, one way for the disease to enter the human body is through a cut or open sore. Anthrax also can enter the body through the lungs. There are vaccines to ward off anthrax. Some forms of the disease can be treated with antibiotics, but anthrax can be fatal.
An online search of local newspaper clippings turned up two anthrax fatalities at Mohawk Carpet Mills in the 1920s, before the discovery of antibiotics, and a 1916 fatality at a Gloversville leather mill.
William Blakely died from an anthrax infection in 1923 while working at the McCleary, Wallin and Crouse division of Mohawk Carpet, what was called the Upper Mill. The Recorder account indicated his first symptom was a pimple near his eye. On Nov. 16, 1923, a compensation commission concluded after many hearings that Blakely had died at St. Mary’s Hospital from anthrax.
On June 15, 1921, Dominic Cirella of 181 E. Main St. in Amsterdam, died at City Hospital of an anthrax infection. He had developed an ulcer on his neck, which swelled his neck beyond recognition, according to the newspaper account. Cirella’s wife was still living in Italy.
On Feb. 4, 1916, Niles Reynolds of Berkshire in Fulton County died from anthrax contracted at G. Levor and Co. leather mill in Gloversville. The newspaper headline called anthrax the “dread disease of skin workers.” The newspaper reported that Reynolds succumbed a few days after noticing the infection. Physicians unsuccessfully operated on him and said the 53-year-old might have survived if his overall health had been better. Reynolds left three children and five grandchildren.
http://www.dailygazette.com/weblogs/bcudmore/2010/nov/29/112910_cudmore/