Three members of Congress are demanding answers after a St Louis scholar's new book revealed details of how the US 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 who wrote "Behind the Fog: How the US 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. She told The Associated Press that 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 US as well as parts of England and Canada were subjected to potentially deadly material through open-air spraying, ingestion and injection, Martino-Taylor said.
"They targeted the most vulnerable in society in most cases," Martino-Taylor said. "They targeted children. They targeted pregnant women in Nashville. People who were ill in hospitals. They targeted wards of the state. And they targeted minority populations."
The tests in Nashville in the late 1940s involved giving 820 poor and pregnant white women a mixture during their first pre-natal visit that included radioactive iron, Martino-Taylor said. The women were chosen without their knowledge.
Blood tests were performed to determine how much radioactive iron had been absorbed by the mother, and the babies' blood was tested at birth.
Similar tests were performed in Chicago and San Francisco, Martino-Taylor said.
Cooper's office plans to seek more information from the Army Legislative Liaison, said spokesman Chris Carroll. "We are asking for details on the Pentagon's role, along with any cooperation by research institutions and other organisations," Carroll said. "These revelations are shocking, disturbing and painful."
In California, investigators created a radiation field inside a building at North Hollywood High School during a weekend in the fall of 1961, Martino-Taylor said.
Similar testing was performed at the University of California, Los Angeles and at a Los Angeles Police Department building.
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