Anthrax investigators eyeing home mail

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Federal investigators are "intensively" considering the possibility of anthrax infection from mail delivered to private homes after a New Jersey woman with no apparent connection to any known anthrax contamination contracted the disease, a top health official has said.

A case in New York -- a 61-year-old woman who died Wednesday of inhalation anthrax -- is also under close scrutiny.

"Up to [Monday], there was no evidence at all that there could be, or is, an individual in which there might be the reasonable question, 'Did they get infected from a piece of mail that went to their home?" said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. "That is being intensively investigated right now."

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A 51-year-old woman who lives near the Hamilton Township, New Jersey, mail facility, where traces of anthrax have been found, tested positive for skin anthrax but is doing fine, health officials said Monday. She was released from the hospital Sunday.

The woman works in an accounting office in the same building that houses U.S. Rep. Chris Smith's district office, but the New Jersey Republican said he did not believe he had been the target of any tainted letters.

The New York woman who died worked in a supply room at a Manhattan hospital, where mail also had been handled, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, but tests so far at the hospital have come back negative for anthrax contamination.

"She was proximate to a mailroom, so you have to give that a lot of consideration." Giuliani said. "But so far the 10 samples that have come back have come back negative, and if all the rest come back negative, then we're going to have to focus on the possibility that she got it somewhere else."

To date, a total of 16 people have been confirmed with anthrax infection, including 10 cases of inhalation anthrax. That figure includes the Manhattan hospital worker, whose case was confirmed by New York health officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Seven of those with inhalation anthrax have been postal employees, including two in the nation's capital who died from the disease. A photo editor at a Florida-based tabloid also died of inhalation anthrax.