While protective clothing and gas masks provide excellent defense, their effective use requires rapid and early detection. Anthrax may not be detected in time to don protective gear before exposure because there is no cloud or color, no smell, no taste, and no indication of an attack when dispersed by aerosol spray. By the time a person is aware of symptoms, it's too late for treatment. Like all vaccines, the anthrax vaccine may cause soreness, redness, itching, swelling and lumps at the injection site. About 30 percent of men report these minor local reactions, but they usually last only a short while.
Lumps can persist a few weeks, but eventually disappear.
Such minor injection-site reactions occur about twice as often among women. For both genders, between 1 and 5 percent report local reactions of 1 to 5 inches in diameter. Reactions wider than 5 inches occur in less than 1 percent. Beyond the injection site, up to 35 percent experience muscle or joint aches, chills, fever, headaches, nausea, loss of appetite, malaise or related symptoms. Again, these symptoms usually go away after a few days.