that tin might simply be picked up by the spores as a result of the use of metal lab containers, although he had not tested that idea. in 2011, the chief of the bacteriology division at the army laboratory, patricia worsham, said it lacked the facilities in 2001 to make the kind of spores in the letters. in 2011, the government conceded that the equipment required was not available in the lab, calling into question a key pillar of the fbi's case, that ivins had produced the anthrax in his lab. according to worsham, the lab's equipment for drying spores, a machine the size of a refrigerator, was not in containment so that it would be expected that non-immunized personnel in that area would have become ill. colleagues of ivins at the lab have asserted that he couldn't have grown the quantity of anthrax used in the letters without their noticing it. a spokesman for the justice department said that the investigators continue to believe that ivins acted alone. congressional oversight congressman rush holt, whose district in new jersey includes a mailbox from which anthrax letters are believed to have been mailed, called for an investigation of the anthrax attacks by congress or by an independent commission he proposed in a bill entitled the anthrax attacks investigation act (h.r. 1248). other members of congress have also called for an independent investigation. an official of the u.s. administration said in march 2010 that president barack obama probably would veto legislation authorizing the next budget for u.s. intelligence agencies if it called for a new investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, as such an investigation "would undermine public confidence" in an fbi probe. in a letter to congressional leaders, peter orszag, the director of the office of management and budget at the time, wrote that an investigation would be "duplicative", and expressed concern about the appearance and precedent involved when congress commissions an agency inspector general to replicate a criminal investigation, but did not list the anthrax investigation as an issue that was serious enough to advise the president to veto the entire bill. national academy of sciences review in what appears to have been a response to lingering skepticism, on september 16, 2008, the fbi asked the national academy of sciences (nas) to conduct an independent review of the scientific evidence that led the agency to implicate u.s. army researcher bruce ivins in the anthrax letter attacks of 2001. however, despite taking this action, director mueller said that the scientific methods applied in the investigation had already been vetted by the research community through the involvement of several dozen nonagency scientists. the nas review officially got underway on april 24, 2009. while the scope of the project included the consideration of facts and data surrounding the investigation of the 2001 bacillus anthracis mailings, as well as a review of the principles and methods used by the fbi, the nas committee was not given the task to "undertake an assessment of the probative value of the scientific evidence in any specific component of the investigation, prosecution, or civil litigation", nor to offer any view on the guilt or innocence of any of the involved people. in mid-2009, the nas committee held public sessions, in which presentations were made by scientists, including scientists from the fbi laboratories. in september 2009, scientists, including paul keim of northern arizona university, joseph michael of sandia national laboratory and peter weber of lawrence livermore national laboratory, presented their findings. in one of the presentations, scientists reported that they did not find any silica particles on the outside of the spores (i.e., there was no "weaponization"), and that only some of the spores in the anthrax letters contained silicon inside their spore coats. one of the spores was still inside the "mother germ", yet it already had silicon inside its spore coat. in october 2010, the fbi submitted materials to nas that it had not previously provided. included in the new materials were results of analyses performed on environmental samples collected from an overseas site. those analyses yielded evidence of the ames strain in some samples. nas recommended a review of those investigations. the nas committee released its report on february 15, 2011, concluding that it was "impossible to reach any definitive conclusion about the origins of the anthrax in the letters, based solely on the available scientific evidence". the report also challenged the fbi and u.s. justice department's conclusion that a single-spore batch of anthrax maintained by ivins at his laboratory at fort detrick in maryland was the parent material for the spores in the anthrax letters. aftermath contaminated mail flow a 2010 united states department of justice report on the attacks contamination and cleanup dozens of buildings were contaminated with anthrax as a result of the mailings. new york-based bio recovery corporation and ohio-based bio-recovery services of america were placed in charge of the cleanup and decontamination of buildings in new york city, including abc headquarters and a midtown manhattan building that was part of the rockefeller center and was home to the new york post and fox news. bio recovery provided the labor and equipment, such as hepa filtered negative pressure air scrubbers, hepa vacuums, respirators, cyclone foggers, and decontamination foam licensed by the sandia national laboratories. ninety-three bags of anthrax-contaminated mail were removed from the new york post alone. the decontamination of the brentwood postal facility took 26 months and cost $130 million. the hamilton, new jersey, postal facility remained closed until march 2005; its cleanup cost $65 million. the united states environmental protection agency led the collaborative effort to clean up the hart senate office building, where senate majority leader tom daschle's office was located, as well as the ford office building and several other locations around the capitol. it used $27 million of its funds for its superfund program on the capitol hill anthrax cleanup. one fbi document said the total damage exceeded $1 billion. preparedness and research the anthrax attacks, as well as the september 11, 2001 attacks, spurred significant increases in u.s. government funding for biological warfare research and preparedness. for example, biowarfare-related funding at the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases (niaid) increased by $1.5 billion in 2003. in 2004, congress passed the project bioshield act, which provides $5.6 billion over ten years for the purchase of new vaccines and drugs. these included the monoclonal antibody raxibacumab, which treats anthrax as well as an anthrax vaccine adsorbed, both of which are stockpiled by the us government. immediately after 9/11, well before the mailing of any of the letters involved in the anthrax attacks, the white house prudently began distributing ciprofloxacin, the only drug approved by the u.s. food and drug administration for the treatment of inhalational anthrax, to senior staffers. ciprofloxacin manufacturer bayer agreed to provide the united states with 100,000 doses for $.95 per dose, a cut in the price from $1.74. the canadian government had previously overridden the bayer patent, and the us was threatening the same measure if bayer did not agree to negotiate the price. shortly afterward, it was recommended that doxycycline was a more appropriate drug to treat anthrax exposure. a widened use of the broad-spectrum antibiotic ciprofloxacin had also raised serious concerns amongst scientists about the creation and increased spread of drug-resistant bacteria strains. numerous corporations offered to supply drugs for free, contingent on the food and drug administration approving their products for anthrax treatment. they included bristol myers squibb (gatifloxacin), johnson and johnson (levofloxacin) and glaxosmithkline (two drugs). eli lilly and pfizer also offered to provide drugs at cost. u.s. mail crackdowns the attack led to the widespread confiscation and curtailment of us mail, especially to us media companies: "checks, bills, letters, and packages simply stopped arriving. for many people and businesses that had resisted the cultural shift to e-mail, this was the moment that pushed them online." policy after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent anthrax mailings, lawmakers were pressed for legislation to combat further terrorist acts. under heavy pressure from then attorney general john d. ashcroft, a bipartisan compromise in the house judiciary committee allowed legislation for the patriot act to move forward for full consideration later that month. a theory that iraq was behind the attacks, based upon purported evidence that the powder was weaponized and some reports of alleged meetings between 9/11 conspirators and iraqi officials, may have contributed to the hysteria which ultimately enabled the 2003 invasion of iraq. adverse health effects years after the attack, several anthrax victims reported lingering health problems including fatigue, shortness of breath and memory loss. a 2004 study proposed that the total number of people harmed by the anthrax attacks of 2001 should be raised to 68. a postal inspector, william paliscak, became severely ill and disabled after removing an anthrax-contaminated air filter from the brentwood mail facility on october 19, 2001. although his doctors, tyler cymet and gary kerkvliet, believe that the illness was caused by anthrax exposure, blood tests did not find anthrax bacteria or antibodies, and therefore the cdc does not recognize it as a case of inhalational anthrax. media television the case has been referenced on the police procedure crime drama criminal minds. season 4, ep. 24. the second season of the national geographic tv series the hot zone focused on the attack. robert stack's final episode of unsolved mysteries prominently featured the anthrax attacks in detail. season 12, ep. 13. dan krauss' "the anthrax attacks: in the shadow of 9/11" from netflix and the bbc takes a "quasi-documentary" approach to the investigation. first streamed on september 8, 2022.