Gruinard Island Declared Anthrax-Free

Date: April 24, 1990 • Location: Ullapool, United Kingdom

Gruinard Island in Scotland, the site of biological warfare testing by British scientists, was declared free of anthrax after 48 years of quarantine.

Gruinard Island is a small, oval-shaped Scottish island approximately two kilometres long by one kilometre wide, located in Gruinard Bay, about halfway between Gairloch and Ullapool. At its closest point to the mainland, it is about one kilometre offshore. In 1942, the island became a sacrifice zone, and was dangerous for all mammals after military experiments with the anthrax bacterium, until it was decontaminated in 1990.