30 Sept 2012

Researcher says U.S. Army scientists secretly sprayed cities with radioactive particles for years

By Madison Ruppert: According to Lisa Martino-Taylor, a sociologist, the United States military carried out top secret experiments involving the spraying of radioactive particles on residents of St. Louis, Missouri for years.
It is public knowledge that the government sprayed zinc cadmium sulfide particles – which are supposedly harmless – over St. Louis, but Professor Martino-Taylor says that her research indicates a radioactive additive was also mixed in with the compound.
The targets of these experiments were primarily minorities and low-income communities – again, hardly surprising given the U.S. government’s history of conducting brutal tests on disadvantaged populations – who had no clue that they were being subjected to dangerous chemicals from 1953-1954 and 1963-1965.

Martino-Taylor’s research uncovered photographs showing just how these particles were distributed as well as detailed descriptions of how the public was exposed to these substances in the name of keeping America safe.
In Corpus Christi, Texas the chemical was dispersed over large portions of the city from airplanes while in St. Louis, the U.S. Army placed chemical sprayers on schools and public housing projects, among other buildings, as well as on station wagons for mobile spraying.
Even local politicians were kept totally out of the loop with St. Louis residents simply being told that the Army was testing smoke screen technology to protect American cities from a potential Russian attack.
“The study was secretive for reason,” said Martino-Taylor to St. Louis’ KSDK. “They didn’t have volunteers stepping up and saying yeah, I’ll breathe zinc cadmium sulfide with radioactive particles.”
“It was pretty shocking. The level of duplicity and secrecy. Clearly they went to great lengths to deceive people,” she said.
Personally, I find this level of duplicity and secrecy far from shocking given that we are talking about the American government here.
Martino-Taylor had to file hundreds of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to get a hold of the once-classified documents confirming the spraying program.
Her research determined that the greatest concentration of spraying was focused on the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex, which is located northwest of downtown St. Louis in the Carr Square neighborhood.
This complex, which was destroyed in 1972, housed some 10,000 people with low incomes, an estimated 70 percent of which were children under the age of 12.
“This was a violation of all medical ethics, all international codes, and the military’s own policy at that time,” Martino-Taylor said.
The earlier evidence emerged in the 1990s when then-Congressman Richard Gephardt called on the Army to open their records and given an explanation for their testing in St. Louis.
“We want to make sure nothing went on that would harm anyone, and that all the fact[s] are out on the table,” Gephardt said at the time.
The documents which were eventually released revealed that the United States Army actually placed sprayers on various buildings, although the Army continued to insist that the chemicals were totally safe.
Martino-Taylor’s research shows that this is far from the truth.
“There is a lot of evidence that shows people in St. Louis and the city, in particular minority communities, were subjected to military testing that was connected to a larger radiological weapons testing project,” said Martino-Taylor.
Martino-Taylor’s findings link the program to U.S. Radium, a company infamous for being hit with lawsuits over their workers getting contaminated by radiation.
“US radium had this reputation where they had been found legally liable for producing a radioactive powdered paint that killed many young women who painted fluorescent watch tiles,” Martino-Taylor said.
The U.S. Army does, in fact, admit that they added a fluorescent substance to the compound they sprayed, but the details of the radioactivity of the added substance remains completely secret and likely will for quite a while.
The documents uncovered by Martino-Taylor show that the Army never so much as conducted a single follow-up study to see if the compound they sprayed did long term damage to the people unwittingly subjected to their experimentation.
“Through this case study, the author explores how a large number of participants inside an organization will willingly participate in organizational acts that are harmful to others, and how large numbers of outsiders, who may or may not be victims of organizational activities, are unable to determine illegal or harmful activity by an organization,” Martino-Taylor wrote.
Indeed, hopefully this case will help strengthen the now massive body of evidence which proves that “our” government, in fact, regularly treats us like nothing more than lab rats, cannon fodder and collateral for loans.

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