Defence is checking whether supposedly dead spores of the deadly disease anthrax it received from the US six years ago may actually be alive.
The samples arrived in 2008 for research on defence against biological weapons and since then have been stored in a secure Defence Science and Technology Organisation laboratory in Melbourne.
"There is no threat to the Australian community," Defence scientist Ken Anderson told a Senate estimates committee in Canberra on Tuesday.
Although the sample arrived six years ago, Defence was unaware that some of the spores could be alive until the US embassy telephoned last Friday.
The US military has admitted shipping research samples of anthrax around the world, including to South Korea, Canada and Australia.
They were supposed to have been rendered inactive by irradiation.
Dr Anderson said the DSTO would be analysing their sample.
"If there are live spores, they will be very few and not very dense," he said.
Even though the samples were thought to be dead, they were still handled as if they were alive.
"Had anybody been exposed we would have seen signs of that long ago," Dr Anderson said.
He said the sample had not arrived in the mail, as some media reports suggested.
"They were treated in accordance with standard protocols and the standards we are expected to comply with," he said.
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