The English name anthrax comes from the Greek word for coal, referencing the characteristic black skin lesions that form in cutaneous anthrax infections. This visual hallmark is a painless ulcer with a necrotic center surrounded by vivid red swelling. The first recorded use of the word anthrax in English appeared in a 1398 translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus's work.
The German scientist Robert Koch first identified Bacillus anthracis as the causative bacterium in 1876. This discovery proved that microbes could cause disease and revolutionized the field of medicine. Earlier clinical descriptions of cutaneous anthrax were given by Maret in 1752 and Fournier in 1769.
On the 2nd of April 1979, an accidental release of anthrax from a biological weapons complex near Sverdlovsk infected at least 94 people, of whom at least 68 died. The Soviet Union had an active bioweapons program that included the production of hundreds of tons of anthrax spores after signing the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. Nearly all the night-shift workers of a ceramics plant directly across the street from the biological facility became infected and most died.
Anthrax has been used as a biological warfare weapon since 1916, with its first modern incidence occurring when Nordic rebels supplied by the German General Staff used anthrax against the Imperial Russian Army in Finland. In the 1930s, anthrax was first tested as a biological warfare agent by Unit 731 of the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria. The Soviet Union created and stored 100 to 200 tons of anthrax spores at Kantubek on Vozrozhdeniya Island, which were abandoned in 1992 and destroyed in 2002.
Concentrated anthrax spores were used for bioterrorism in the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, delivered by mailing postal letters containing the spores to several news media offices and two Democratic senators. As a result, 22 people were infected and five died, with only a few grams of material used in these attacks. The cleanup of anthrax-contaminated sites, such as the Senate Office Building and the Brentwood postal facility, was time-consuming and costly, with the Senate Office Building cleanup costing $27 million and the Brentwood postal facility cleanup costing $130 million and taking 26 months.
Russian researchers estimate that the Arctic permafrost contains around 1.5 million anthrax-infected reindeer carcasses, and the spores may survive in the permafrost for 105 years. In 2016, an anthrax outbreak in reindeer was linked to a 75-year-old carcass that defrosted during a heat wave. The thawing of permafrost poses a significant threat to public health, as the spores can be released into the environment and infect humans and animals.