Did anyone see this last year?

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http://www.naplesnews.com/01/10/naples/d693762a.htm

Businessman decontaminated after having allergic reaction to newspaper

Anthrax scares keeping emergency service personnel busy

Tuesday, October 30, 2001

Daily News staff

Anthrax scares have kept the North Naples fire department's hazardous

materials team busy. The team responded Monday to its 29th incident since

mid-October.

Longtime Collier County businessman Del Ackerman was decontaminated and

released Monday from Cleveland Clinic Naples Hospital after having an

allergic-type reaction to editions of the New York Times newspaper.

Ackerman, 65, owns Del's 24-Hour Food Store at the corner of Bayshore and

son drives in East Naples. He delivers the Times, printed on the

state's east coast, to a convenience store in North Naples.

On Sundays, the Times comes in a corrugated box while the rest of the week

it doesn't, Ackerman said. He had the same reaction with the Times a week

ago.

As soon as he opened the box with the newspapers, he was hit by the strong

smell of soap powder and his eyes and face swelled, he said.

" I don't know what it is, " he said Monday afternoon after being discharged

from the hospital earlier in the day.

Ackerman, his wife, said she wasn't concerned about anthrax, and said

she was surprised by how the hospital reacted.

" He has many allergic reactions, " she said.

Dr. Moll, medical director of Cleveland Clinic's department of

emergency medicine, said Ackerman's symptoms were characteristic of a

reaction to a toxic chemical and not to inhalation anthrax, where the

flu-like symptoms take several weeks to appear.

" This is not a typical reaction to anthrax, " Moll said. " We went ahead and

decontaminated him, just like we do with any toxic substance (exposure). "

A nurse and registration desk employee at the hospital who had contact with

Ackerman also were decontaminated, he said.

Fire department spokesman Jerry Sanford said the hazardous materials team

took the newspapers from Ackerman's vehicle, sealed them in a 5-gallon

plastic container and took the container to the Collier County Health

Department. That's standard protocol with anthrax scares reported with mail,

he said. The health department sends the items to a state laboratory in

Tampa for testing.

Ackerman said the clothes he was wearing Monday were being sent to the

laboratory, and that local authorities are having his car decontaminated.

Judy Nuland, disaster coordinator for the health department, said none of

the test results from items sent to the laboratory from Collier during past

anthrax scares have come back positive.