FORT LAUDERDALE — Environmental officials and a Florida lawmaker will be closely watching the test of a pest-killing gas that could be a way to eliminate anthrax spores from a tabloid publisher’s former office building.
A test scheduled today in a Davie trailer will use methyl-bromide gas on harmless bacteria used as a stand-in for anthrax spores.
University of Florida entomologist Rudolph Scheffrahn and his partner, Mark Weinberg, a Lauderhill exterminator, contend the chemical could be used to clean the contaminated American Media Inc. building in Boca Raton for $2 million — much less than the $7 million to $20 million that had been estimated.
The building has been quarantined since anthrax killed a Sun photo editor in October 2001.