Three
members of Congress are demanding answers after a St. Louis scholar’s
new book revealed details of how the U.S. government sprayed,
injected and fed radiation and other dangerous materials to countless
people in secret Cold War-era testing.
The
health ramifications of the tests are unknown. Lisa Martino-Taylor,
an associate professor of sociology at St. Louis Community College
who wrote “Behind the Fog: How the U.S. Cold War Radiological
Weapons Program Exposed Innocent Americans,” acknowledged that
tracing diseases like cancer to specific causes is difficult.
But
three congressmen who represent areas where testing occurred —
Democrats William Lacy Clay of Missouri, Brad Sherman of California
and Jim Cooper of Tennessee — said they were outraged by the
revelations.
Martino-Taylor
used Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain previously
unreleased documents, including army records. She also reviewed
already public records and published articles. In an interview, she
said she found that a small group of researchers, aided by leading
academic institutions, worked to develop radiological weapons and
later “combination weapons” using radioactive materials along
with chemical or biological weapons.
Her
book, published in August, was a follow-up to her 2012 dissertation
that found the government conducted secret testing of zinc cadmium
sulfide in a poor area of St. Louis in the 1950s and 1960s. The book
focuses on the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s.
An
army spokeswoman declined comment, but Martino-Taylor’s 2012 report
on testing in St. Louis was troubling enough to spur an army
investigation. The investigation found no evidence that the St. Louis
testing posed a health threat.
Martino-Taylor
said the offensive radiological weapons program was a top priority
for the government. Unknowing people at places across the U.S. as
well as parts of England and Canada were subjected to potentially
deadly material through open-air spraying, ingestion and injection,
Martino-Taylor said.
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