NEW YORK—Last week, news that anthrax and bubonic plague had been found by researchers in the New York City subway sparked frightening headlines that gave many the willies about the metro, and sent some scurrying to the nearest drug store for extra hand sanitizer.
But it appears to have been a lot of fuss over probably nothing at all dangerous—maybe even safer in some cases than what’s in the hand sanitizer.
The first point of reassurance is that the study only found “DNA fragments associated with anthrax and Bubonic plague.” These fragments are not live or “necessarily infectious,” according to the study’s senior investigator, Dr. Christopher Mason, an assistant professor in Weill Cornell’s Department of Physiology and Biophysics.
