Army: No risk from secret St. Louis tests - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Army: No risk from secret St. Louis tests - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

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ST. LOUIS — An Army investigation into secret chemical testing in impoverished areas of St. Louis during the Cold War era has corroborated three previous studies that the testing posed no health risk to those who lived in the areas, according to a letter from a top Army official.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Army used motorized blowers atop a low-income housing high-rise, on schools and in other locations to spray zinc cadmium sulfide, a fine fluorescent powder, into the air. The testing was part of a biological weapons program and St. Louis was chosen because it bore some resemblance to Russian cities that the U.S. might attack.

Both of Missouri's U.S. senators, Republican Roy Blunt and Democrat Claire McCaskill, wrote to the Army after learning of St. Louis professor Lisa Martino-Taylor's research about the program.

Katherine Hammack, assistant secretary of the Army, said in a letter received by Blunt's office on Friday that Army investigators reviewed several assessments and studies compiled over the past nearly two decades and found no health risk from the zinc cadmium sulfide (ZnCdS) sprayed in St. Louis.

Martino-Taylor's research also raised concerns that the Army performed radiation testing by mixing radioactive particles with the zinc cadmium sulfide.