Secret Cold War tests in St. Louis raise concerns (radioactive particles with the zinc cadmium) [View all]

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

By JIM SALTER

ST. LOUIS (AP) - Doris Spates was a baby when her father died inexplicably in 1955. She has watched four siblings die of cancer, and she survived cervical cancer.

After learning that the Army conducted secret chemical testing in her impoverished St. Louis neighborhood at the height of the Cold War, she wonders if her own government is to blame.

In the mid-1950s, and again a decade later, the Army used motorized blowers atop a low-income housing high-rise, at schools and from the backs of station wagons to send a potentially dangerous compound into the already-hazy air in predominantly black areas of St. Louis.

Local officials were told at the time that the government was testing a smoke screen that could shield St. Louis from aerial observation in case the Russians attacked.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20121003/DA1MBJK82.html

---

This undated photo provided by the subject shows St. Louis sociology professor Lisa Martino-Taylor. Martino-Taylor performed a study raising new concerns about secret Army testing during the Cold War that sprayed a potentially hazardous chemical into the air in St. Louis. The tests targeted predominantly black areas of the city. Now, some residents are left to wonder if those tests led to health problems for them and for relatives. (AP Photo/Courtesy Lisa Martino-Taylor)