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AMI Building Declared Anthrax-Free After MARCOR Remediation Decontamination
2/13/2007–Boca Raton, FL–The final chapter of the five-year saga of the anthrax attack on the former headquarters of the tabloid publisher American Media, Inc. – and the subsequent decontamination of the building – was closed yesterday with the lifting of the quarantine order by Palm Beach County Health Department. Throughout the ordeal, MARCOR Remediation, Inc. played a key role in the anthrax cleanup and final sampling that led to the re-opening.
The AMI building was the first target in a series of anthrax attacks in the weeks following the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. Soon afterward, the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. was also attacked. MARCOR Remediation, a leading environmental services contractor and the firm that helped clean up the Senate Building anthrax, was asked to bring its expertise to Boca Raton to complete the anthrax cleanup there. The building, former home of such tabloid newspapers as the National Enquirer, had been vacated after its photo editor died from inhaling anthrax.
"We are very proud to have helped preserve the public safety and enable the building to once again re-open and contribute to the economy in Florida," said Joan Blazucki, Director of Corporate Communication.
In July 2005, the owner of the former AMI Building assigned MARCOR Remediation to decontaminate more than 8,500 boxes of anthrax-laden archival photos, clippings, and other files stored at the site. It is our understanding that the boxes contained millions of photos of celebrities taken over decades.
This past November, MARCOR returned to the building to finish the cleanup begun by another contractor. MARCOR collected post-decontamination samples, which were then analyzed. The results were turned over to the blue ribbon panel called the Technical Working Group, which comprised representatives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Agency for Toxic Substance Disease Registry, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Hazards and others. Palm Beach County Health Department Director Jean M. Malecki lifted the quarantine order on February 12.
MARCOR Remediation – http://www.marcor.com/ – is the first contractor in the U.S. to be licensed to perform asbestos abatement, and the first contractor to be licensed to perform mold remediation. With 15 offices nationwide, its services include industrial cleaning, building decontamination, plant/process decommissioning and demolition, soil/groundwater remediation, hazardous coatings removal, storage tank management, and more.
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