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Victims of suspected radiological spraying in St. Louis suffer thyroid, other cancers — Helicopters covered children in powder — “Oh my God, if they did that there’s no telling what else they’re hiding”

Published: October 4th, 2012 at 2:29 pm ET
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Title: Secret Cold War tests in St. Louis raise concerns
Source: Associated Press
Date: October 4, 2012

[...]

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 vehicles, 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.

[...]

in 1994, the government said the tests were part of a biological weapons program

[...]

There are strong lines of evidence that there was a radiological component to the St. Louis study,” [St. Louis Community College-Meramec sociology professor Lisa Martino-Taylor] said.

Doris Spates

[A] baby when her father died inexplicably in 1955. She has watched four siblings die of cancer, and she survived cervical cancer. Spates, now 57 and retired, was born in 1955, delivered inside her family’s apartment on the top floor of the since-demolished Pruitt-Igoe housing development in north St. Louis. Her family didn’t know that on the roof, the Army was intentionally spewing hundreds of pounds of zinc cadmium sulfide into the air.

Three months after her birth, her father died. Four of her 11 siblings succumbed to cancer at relatively young ages.

“I’m wondering if it got into our system,” Spates said. “When I heard about the testing, I thought, ‘Oh my God. If they did that, there’s no telling what else they’re hiding.’”

Mary Helen Brindell

The Army has admitted only to using blowers to spread the chemical, but Brindell recalled a summer day playing baseball with other kids in the street when a squadron of green Army planes flew close to the ground and dropped a powdery substance. She went inside, washed it off her face and arms, then went back out to play.

Over the years, Brindell has battled four types of cancer — breast, thyroid, skin and uterine.

“I feel betrayed,” said Brindell, who is white. “How could they do this? We pointed our fingers during the Holocaust, and we do something like this?”

Published: October 4th, 2012 at 2:29 pm ET
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48 comments

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October 4th, 2012 | Category: Midwest, US
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