N. Carolina firm to sell home anthrax test kits 

NEW YORK, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Vital Living Products Inc. (VLPI.OB), a maker
of water testing kits, is planning to ship home anthrax tests to retailers
before Thanksgiving, company President and Chief Executive Donald
Prodrebarac said on Thursday. 
    After the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center,
Prodrebarac said the company was planning to develop a kit to detect toxic
agents before the recent anthrax scares around the country. 

    Prodrebarac said he called a microbiologist who has done work with the
company on Sept. 12 and determined that anthrax was the 'most obvious'
agent for a test kit. 

    Vital Living Products, of Matthews, North Carolina, sells a water
testing kit for coliform bacteria through home improvement stores under
the PurTest brand and has provided the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention with kits. A simple detection of the disease can come from a
nose swab test. 

    The new test kit, called the PurTest Anthrax Test, which will retail
for $19 to $25, was adapted to test for anthrax on surfaces and in the
water and air. 

    'It wasn't like we were coming at this from scratch,' Prodrebarac said
on the creation of a test kit for a toxic agent. 

    The Centers for Disease Control, based in Atlanta, said anthrax is
diagnosed in people from isolating the germ from the blood, skin lesions
or respiratory secretions or by measuring specific antibodies in the blood
of persons with suspected cases. 

    Since the company announced definite plans to develop the kit on Oct.
16 and was featured in a Wall Street Journal article on Thursday,
Prodrebarac said he has received calls from investors, consumers and
retailers expressing interest. 

    'There have been lots of questions and understandably so,' he said. 

    When asked about false positives generated from the test, Prodrebarac
said, 'So far we have not had that issue take place. We haven't had false
negatives either. This is a very, very accurate test.' The company has set
a press conference about the test kit on Oct. 23 in New York. 

12:42 10-18-01
Copyright 2001, Reuters News Service