US military secretly sprayed radioactive particles in St. Louis and Texas

A college professor from St. Louis, Missouri claims that allegedly harmless chemical sprays that doused the city in the 1950s and ‘60s as a Cold War-era protection measure was something much more sinister.

 At the time, the US Army admitted to showering certain locales with a chemical mixture, but said it was to test smoke screens they’d deploy to shield St. Louis from any nuclear assault by way of Russia. According to Martino-Taylor, the Army and others misled the public and actually poisoned residents of St. Louis and other cities with a dangerous compound composed of zinc cadmium sulfide and radioactive elements.

"It was pretty shocking. The level of duplicity and secrecy,” the researcher tells St. Louis’ KSDK.

“Clearly they went to great lengths to deceive people."

"The study was secretive for reason. They didn't have volunteers stepping up and saying yeah, I'll breathe zinc cadmium sulfide with radioactive particles," she tells KSDK.

Instead of using curious citizens as test-subjects, the Army resorted to waging a secretive radioactive war on its own impoverished townspeople: according to the material Martino-Taylor has collected, the military launched no fewer than 16 tests in only the year 1953 that involved 35 separate releases of zinc cadmium sulfide in St. Louis. The neighborhoods affected, the professor found, were described at the time as "a densely populated slum district” that held around 10,000 low income residents, mostly children.

Regardless of what her future research reveals, she says, "This was a violation of all medical ethics, all international codes, and the military's own policy at that time.”