A Manhattan resident who makes African drums for a living contracted respiratory anthrax, apparently from working with unprocessed cow and goat hide.

Officials said the 44-year-old man, who lives in the West Village and works in DUMBO, is being treated in the intensive care unit of a Pennsylvania hospital. In December he took a two-week trip to Africa’s Ivory Coast, where he purchased the hide to make drums.

Mayor Bloomberg said there was no evidence of “criminal intent” or danger to the public, and that the several city agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Centers for Disease and Prevention are investigating.

“We have every reason to believe that this infection is an isolated, accidentally, and naturally transmitted case,” Mr. Bloomberg told reporters during a hastily called press briefing in City Hall yesterday afternoon.

The city was notified of the case Tuesday and got final confirmation yesterday after cultures came back positive for the disease.

Police have secured the man’s apartment and DUMBO workspace and said that they found no evidence of anthrax production in either the Brooklyn or Manhattan apartment and that they had also searched his van. The man came from John F. Kennedy International Airport and was carrying four goat skins in his luggage.

The case harkened back to the months after the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, when anthrax was sent through the mail to NBC’s studios and to two senators in Washington, among others. Nobody was arrested for the bio-terrorism attacks, which killed five people nationwide.

Although local authorities did not release this patient’s name, the public relations director at the Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, Pa., Kathy Lewis, confirmed that he is Vado Diomande. She said he is in stable condition in the intensive care unit.

Three other individuals who worked in the DUMBO space, where Mr. Diomande worked with the hides, are being treated with antibiotics as a preventative measure, Mr.Bloomberg said. A fourth person also may have been exposed, but was traveling yesterday.

Mr. Bloomberg and the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden, said doctors in the city were being notified of the case. They also reminded the public that inhalation anthrax is not transmitted between humans.

“If you live next door, or if you shook hands with this guy, you don’t have a risk. You really have to work with the untreated hides,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

Mr. Frieden said the patient was “not only working with the raw hides, but that the work generated what we call aerosols or small particles that could in fact cause inhalation anthrax.”

The police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said the Brooklyn and Manhattan buildings where the patient works and lives, which he would not identify, are safe and that officials would be going in with “Level C” equipment to protect from airborne spores. He said no evacuation was necessary and that when police go in they will look to make sure no anthrax production operation is in place.

Mr. Bloomberg said Mr. Diomande was traveling to Pennsylvania on business. The Pennsylvania State Department of Health said he collapsed last week after performing as part of Kotchegna, a dance company. He was admitted to the hospital on Friday. While inhalation anthrax is often fatal, officials said he was breathing on his own and is in relatively good condition.

Mr. Diomande founded the Kotchegna Dance Company in 1989, according to its Web site, which refers to him as an artistic director who choreographs dance. It was unclear yesterday whether Mr. Diomande followed federal regulations when he brought the animal hide back from the Ivory Coast.

A medical epidemiologist at the CDC, Lisa Rotz, said yesterday in a teleconference that the agency was waiting to get samples of the hide and that various government agencies are working to “identify how he was able to bring hides in.”