CHAPTER TWO - TARGET ST. LOUIS: MOSCOW AND AN AMERICAN “SLUM” IN THE CROSSHAIRS

Prompted by the dark and sinister Nazi war crimes involving human experimentation that were exposed during the Nuremberg trials, in August, 1947 The Nuremberg Code established a set of international research codes. Those including the following:

With World War II and the Nuremberg trials fresh on the minds of many, the Army Chief of Staff published in 1952 with approval by the Secretary of the Army, seven guidelines and conditions in which human subjects could be used in military research. A second policy statement titled, The Use of Human Volunteers in Experimental Research, aka the Wilson Memorandum, followed shortly thereafter in 1953, and it was supplemented in 1954 (U.S. House of Representatives, 1994: 125-27). The guidelines were published after “legal investigation and ethical review”, according to military records. (U.S. Senate, 1977: 178). Early guidelines, which were approved by the Secretary of the Army (CS 385-30, June 30, 1952) presented the following protocol:

The Wilson Memorandum also stated explicitly that a human subject involved in testing, Deception in human subject testing is explicitly defined by the Department of the Army, as a form of constraint or coercion, which is strictly prohibited. According to Bernard Lo, physician and medical ethicist, deception includes, “all statements and actions that are intended to mislead the listener, whether or not they are literally true”; this would include the use of “technical jargon, ambiguous statements, or misleading statistics, not answering a question, and omitting important information” (Lo, B.: 50). Thus, according to Lo, deception does not necessarily employ an element of duress, force, restraint, or coercion, but it could occur covertly and subtly. The Wilson Memorandum instructs, Here, the subject must provide consent before any testing begins, after being fully informed by those in charge of the study about the purpose, nature, method, means, risks, inconveniences, and health effects to that subject. In 1954, the Wilson Memorandum was supplemented to include the element of comprehension, whereby, “…the human subject should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision” (U.S. House of Representatives: 127). In fact, any proposals involving human subjects were required to be reviewed by June, 1953 by the Army Surgeon General with final approval by the Secretary of the Army. The Wilson Memorandum guidelines appeared to be based on, but nevertheless deviated from the Nuremberg Code in several ways. First, consent was “required” with the U.S., whereby it was “absolutely essential” per Nuremberg.

The Army alludes to the requirement of written consent, without explicitly mentioning it, however when obtained, it needed to be signed and witnessed. The Army did not require animal experimentation prior to human experimentation, and did not stipulate that “injury must be avoided”, or that the study is not “random and unnecessary in nature”, as did Nuremberg. Although the Army stipulates in vague terms that experimentation must yield “results for the good of society”(5), Nuremberg requires that the “degree of risk” should “never exceed the humanitarian importance of the problem”. Volunteers could withdraw under either set of guidelines, however per Army, only “if he feels that he has reached the limits of his physical or mental endurance”. There is no Army stipulation whereby the researcher could end the experiment at any stage if there is cause to believe there is harm, injury or death occurring. Most notably, where Nuremberg stipulates that experiments should be conducted by “scientifically qualified investigators”, the U.S. military omitted this requirement, and thus, with the stroke of a pen, the U.S. Army deemed anyone qualified to perform human subject testing.

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SHIFT IN MISSION

On a spring afternoon in 1945, a group of scientists, all highly educated young white men, affiliated with elite universities across the United States, met at their usual location in Rochester, New York. The building was secured, and the window shades were down and fixed. At the helm, sat Dr. Stafford Warren, Professor of Radiology and Chairman of the Department of Radiology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. Dr. Warren had recently been commissioned colonel in the Army Medical Corps. J. Robert Oppenheimer, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission?s General Advisory Committee, and project director of the Manhattan Project, joined the other scientists at the conference table, next to Oppenheimer?s close friend Louis Hempelmann. Colleagues Willard Libby from the University of Chicago (although he would later move to University of California, Los Angeles), Joseph Hamilton of Berkeley, Wright Langham, who had worked on biomedical research at the Manhattan Project, and John Lawrence, also from Berkeley, were also in attendance, or would soon arrive to take their places at the conference table. The group of scientists discussed a proposal to inject a hospital patient at Rochester or Chicago with radioactive material such as plutonium, and then analyze their excreta and body fluids.

Oppenheimer submitted his approval to the experiment in writing, but the men wanted help from their superiors at Manhattan Headquarters for the design of the project. They had each been assigned by the top secret Manhattan Engineer District (aka Manhattan Project), to head ten secret spin-off divisions of the Manhattan Project. Each division, located in strategic locations throughout the United States, would be uniquely responsible for research and development of nuclear weapons; this included the testing of human bodies- both alive and dead- for the effects of, or exposure to radiation.

Human subject weapons testing led by this group, would not be limited to the nameless patient at Chicago or Rochester. Nor would testing be limited to military personnel at remote sites. Testing that involved chemical, biological, and radiation simulants and compounds criss-crossed clear, blue skies, touched down upon the breadbasket of America into the wheat fields of the Midwest, and moved stealthily from shoreline to shoreline. In some cities, hiding in beautiful blue skies lurked sinister clouds of death. On sparkling California shorelines dotted with white sails and lined with beachgoers, deadly spores sprayed from regal-looking battle ships.

On busy urban sidewalks while passersby rushed to work, invisible, carcinogenic particles were drawn deeply into their lungs, by the design of a few, privileged enough to know it was happening. Under the sparkling stars and clear bright moon, as children, their parents, and grandparents, slept on their porches or beneath an open window to escape the blazing heat of a St. Louis summer, toxins drifted silently inside through open windows and settled into their lungs. The particulates were designed to be optimal size for deep inhalation by the sleeping, unsuspecting victims. It was the Cold War, and this was America.

BACKGROUND

So began a Congressional Hearing in 1994, which could potentially reveal to Americans not simply ugly secrets of the historical past, but also a paradigm shift and a fundamental military strategy change, whereby the targets of military weapons were now civilians. The Army began an aggressive program in the 1940s to assess the defensive and offensive use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Most Americans were familiar with the first major use of nuclear weapons in warfare-when nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945, and three days later on the shipbuilding town of Nagasaki, Japan. In Nagasaki, the death toll from the atomic bomb reached approximately 75,000, with twice that number of victims dying later from lingering effects. Many Americans believed that after this jarring use of new warfare technology, the American scientists who had worked at the Manhattan Engineering District (aka the Manhattan Project aka Project Y) had packed their belongings and returned to their quiet academic appointments at prestigious universities around the country, to resume their pre-war teaching and perfunctory research.

The scientists had been called to serve their country in a time of war, and their mission was complete. In the minds of some, the scientists would be linked forever not just to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also to a town tucked away high in the red mesas of Los Alamos, New Mexico- a town that could not be more different from the Japanese port cities that bore the fiery, twisted wrath of the atomic blasts. Contrary to popular belief however, the Manhattan Engineering Project scientists did not slip back into an ordinary life after atomic bombs were dropped in Japan. In fact, their lives forever changed by their experience at Los Alamos, many of the top scientists from the Manhattan Project had permanently shifted career trajectory into the military realm, and would continue on this fateful new track for the rest of their lives.

As revealed in one of several U.S. Congressional hearings on the subject, the United States military did not pause after the atom bombs dropped; in fact, they ramped up production of every type of weapon technology they had in their potential arsenal. Because much of the technology that was developed during the aggressive military push of World War II was new and untested, the military would need to harness the efforts of thousands or tens of thousands of people, to play a contributing role in advancing new weapons of war. Many would come from various branches within the academy, others from military war schools or officer?s clubs, yet others from inside dust-filled munitions factories, banks, and corporate boardrooms, and some would stand before the podium and microphone, in front of note-pad wielding reporters. Other roles needed to be fulfilled.

To accomplish their lofty goal, the military needed not just labor and creativity, but a commodity much more precious: human test subjects, of all ages, whether willing or unwilling. The military was in fact able to very quickly harness wide swaths of human labor and ingenuity, if not genius, towards their goal to build the atom bomb, as goes the “official” story on the books. The military elites also needed the assistance of a complacent public that would accept military research and development as necessary, if not desirable. For a mission that included decades long human-subject testing without consent of the victims, full public support could not be obtained by convincing political oratory or simple fear-mongering. Indeed, those methods would be employed, but to see the mission through, an open public debate would need to be suppressed, secrecy employed, and all potential dissent quashed both internally (those directly involved in research, development, and testing of deadly weapons), and among those external to the effort- the general public and potential victims. There is thus, a dark and chilling parallel layer below the publicly discussed narrative. Indeed, it is a layer of deception attached like a parasite to the underbelly of “truth”, involving a secret spin-off group of elite scientists from the Manhattan Engineering District, who would enjoy full freedom to pursue military-related scientific and medical inquiry with no accountability to their tens of thousands of human victims.

World War II had ended with victory for the Allies in 1945, but it had left in its wake what came to be known as the Cold War. The Cold War would linger dangerously for four decades as the United States and the Soviet Union clashed in their attempts to retain power, which resulted in icy political relations between the two countries. In August 1949, four years after WWII ended, President Truman announced that U.S. Intelligence officials discovered that the Soviets had tested an atomic bomb in Kazakhstan, and were developing nuclear technology for use in warfare. This Soviet capability came “years earlier than Western Intelligence services had predicted and radically shift[ed] the global balance of power” (Tucker: 123). This revelation virtually blind-sided political officials. It was predicted (and discussed in top secret memorandums) by high ranking military officials, that the Soviets would likely produce an atomic bomb by mid-1951, and that by 1953, the Soviets would likely have nuclear capability to the tune of 100 bombs (U.S. Air Force, 1954)(7).

In another 1949 military report, it was stated that the earliest possible date by which the U.S.S.R. might be expected to produce an atomic bomb was mid-1950, but more likely in 1953. The nuclear arms race was on, and American military officials did not waste a moment in searching for ways to advance military technology and capability, with looming reports that by 1953 Soviets might have full nuclear capability. While some military analysts pushed for a ramped up biological weapons strategy, others (Navy) likewise pushed for limited use of chemical weapons (Tucker, 127). By 1951 however, a Joint Chiefs of Staff report “concluded that the USSR had biological weapons and was using large-scale field tests that targeted human subjects” (Guilemann: 96). This may in fact, have been mostly rhetoric to advance a specific military agenda. According to Clarence Y. H. Lo,

In fact, “time and again the administration had exploited the multifaceted „menace? of Communism to mask America?s postwar expansion into Europe and the world for reasons having little, if anything to do with bolshevism” (Kolko: 650). Truman and his secretary of state Dean Acheson, “keenly saw the need to maintain a sense of danger from Russia and Communism that was the prerequisite for mobilizing protracted American efforts and high allocations” (Kolko: 650). In other words, in a move that was truly political in nature, Truman and his administration would instill a sense of urgency and fear of the Soviets and Communism to bolster the immediate need for increased military funding. During this time period, there was a “major increase in the growth of the U.S. national security establishment”, and by the end of 1952, national security expenditures reached a high of $64 billion a year (Lo, C., 1982: 427-28). Indeed, according to Kolko, et al., “the historian will look hard to find responsible men who thought the Russians were an immediate military threat to the United States or Western Europe” (Kolko: 664). A threat may indeed have been there, however, in this study we find that military and political elites have, through the use of various mechanisms, the ability to construct the level of a threat; as it is constructed higher and higher we may see greater losses of freedoms in society.

In 1953, after a long hiatus from political power, embattled Republicans gained control of the White House, when Dwight D. Eisenhower became President of the United States by an overwhelming majority. Although power had switched hands to the Republicans, Eisenhower in no way substantively changed foreign policy related to military strategy, and according to Army documents, military officials continued to explore the viability of a bio-weapons program. As Eisenhower stuck to the mission of a general arms buildup, other methods of warfare were also advanced in U.S. laboratories. Indeed, the Arms Race was heating up, and the Cold War was frosting U.S./Soviet relations. Officials argued that “field studies” would be necessary, to increase confidence in their new weapons technology that sprang out of World War II efforts (Guillemin: 101). In an echo of what American military officials charged of the Soviets two years earlier, American military officials would use their own “field tests” in 1953 to target American human subjects- indeed, civilians- in mid-sized cities on American soil, without the consent or knowledge of their victims.

Despite clever or even glamorous names, they all represented something much more sinister and much closer to home, than the fringes of what seemed to be a very distant Cold War.

With specific urban and climactic conditions in mind, officials considered several Midwest cities including Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Omaha, Toledo, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis, and also Winnipeg, Canada. Of those, St. Louis and Minneapolis were selected as they both “met the desired summer temperature range”, desired population density, urban structural heights “in general not exceeding three stories”, the presence of universities for obtaining personnel to work on the project, cooperation of local officials including the U.S. Weather Bureau and police departments, and all the Soviet features that the Army desired to simulate in an urban American area (NRC, 1997b: 118-19).(8)

LIE AND DECEPTIONS IN ST. LOUIS

Medical ethicist Bernard Lo defines lying as “statements that the speaker knows are false or believes to be false and that are intended to mislead the listener” (Lo, B.: 50). This is distinctive from deception, which is “broader than lying”, in that it “includes all statements and actions that are intended to mislead the listener, whether or not they are literally true (Lo, B.: 50). Thus, intentionally false and misleading statements fall under Lo?s definition of lie, which is a form of deception. We clearly see lying and deception occur in the Manhattan-Rochester Coalition case study.

On a chilly February night in St. Louis at 11:05 p.m., a young contractor for the United States Army turned the valve to release the particles into the frosty air just above the sidewalk. The plume was carried aloft, meandering its way up above the trees, and then dropping down to street level again, swept down by the wind. The worker stood silently for five minutes as the motor purred, ticking out twelve grams of the mysterious, fluffy powder into the air. He knew little about what he was doing, other than following the instructions given by his crew leader earlier that evening. The job came about after seeing an ad on the university?s job-search bulletin board, and it seemed easy enough for a young student who wanted a non-demanding, part-time job. Most of the residents, some just a few feet away, were tucked into bed or dozing, while a local newscaster droned on about everything except what was going on outside their century-old windows. The data from the evening?s activities would ultimately be missing at the hands of the Army, in a familiar pattern of missing data and other obfuscation, that would be no better explained by military officials during Congressional hearings in the distant mid-1990s. The residents in that fateful neighborhood, and others that were also targeted in St. Louis, Minneapolis, and other U.S. cities, had no idea that they had been selected for military field tests. Indeed, they had not been informed by local, state, or federal authorities, that a test would even occur; nor, were they advised to take any precautions. The Army would continue the aerosol study in St. Louis, through January 20, 1954.(9)

Four decades after the 1953-54 Army study, news began to stream into the press that those St. Louis residents, and tens of thousands of other victims in urban and rural areas throughout the country, had been used as unsuspecting test subjects by the U.S. military. Officials claimed that selected areas within the cities of St. Louis and Minneapolis had been doused in a “harmless” mixture of zinc cadmium sulfide (ZnCdS). Other parts of the country had been sprayed with other materials of varying toxicity.

In fact, the aerosol studies were not as Army officials “admitted” during Congressional hearings in the 1990s, part of a defense strategy to envelop urban areas in a cloud of smoke, hiding civilians from Soviet attack. Technology had advanced beyond that; the use of radar in the military (both U.S. and Soviet) made such a plan preposterous. St. Louis was not the only city to experience this fateful selection inside the crosshairs of the military, but it is the subject of this case study of lies, deception and unchecked state power.

ST. LOUIS IN THE CROSSHAIRS: 1953

Three distinct narratives emerge regarding the St. Louis aerosol study of 1953. The first was an “admission” by military officials that the aerosol studies were designed to test massive smoke clouds in which to hide U.S. cities from Soviet air attacks. The aerosol studies were thus described as defensive measures to protect civilians residing in the targeted city. A different narrative emerges internally however, from the official Air Force Biological Program historian, Dorothy Miller, in 1952. (10)

According to Miller, the United States military wanted to understand the “predictable dispersal of aerosol clouds over the potential target areas” (Guillemin: 103). Although not terribly specific, Miller?s Air Force version of events leading up to the aerosol releases, indicates a military project of an offensive nature, where chemical dispersal becomes the focus, rather than one of chemical coverage or blanketing to hide potential victims. On the heels of Miller?s official report, the Army discussed the study in their own classified report, advising that the studies were in fact, “part of a continuing program designed to provide the field experimental data necessary to estimate munitions requirements for the strategic use of chemical and biological agents against typical target cities” (U.S. Army, 1953a: 118). (11)

More specifically, officials outlined four “specific objectives” of the tests:

Despite military officials' claims that the aerosol release objectives were to test smoke screen defenses for American civilians, the studies were in fact, as Miller alluded, undertaken to advance offensive warfare tactics against civilians in similarly featured Soviet cities. The tests? objectives and selection of targeted areas were part of a vast, complex plan to advance use of chemical, biological and radiological agents in warfare against civilian populations in other countries. As the world recoiled in horror over the events at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Nuremberg, what had occurred in Japan was an ugly foreshadowing of future warfare tactics, whereby the newest of weaponry and methods of warfare would aim squarely at civilians.

According to one researcher, officials overseeing this new covert project that targeted U.S. cities, would ultimately name it the St. Jo Program. (13)

“Tentative plans were made to conduct “tracer” tests in Minneapolis and St. Louis during the winter, spring and summer of 1953, and the winter of 1954. In addition according to the Army, it was planned to conduct “tracer” tests in various industrial complexes in and near St. Louis during the fall of 1953 (U.S. Army, 1953a). A similar study was planned for Winnipeg, Canada approximately ten days after the St. Louis studies, to accommodate rotation of the equipment that would be used at multiple test sites; the time delay would assist in transport, crew training, and arrangement of temporary accommodations for personnel (U.S. Army, 1953a: 51). One Air Force historian stated in reference to the study that, “any expenditure figures finally derived will refer to a completely unprotected target population”, (this author?s emphasis) “which is assumed to be exposed in the open in a city, during the whole time of passage of the biological cloud” (Guillemin: 103). The St. Jo offensive war “simulations” would begin in January 1953 in both Minneapolis and St. Louis.

The U.S. Army described the 1953-54 St. Louis study as a “fluorescent particle tracer experiment”. Federal officials were however, not satisfied with nearly a year of aerosolized material dispersed over the city of St. Louis in 1953; they would return again to St. Louis in the 1960s for additional aerosol tests. (14)

TARGET ONE: MINNEAPOLIS

According to the National Research Council (NRC), “a total of 160 tests using various simulants were conducted at 66 locations (both military and civilian targets) in the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii) and Canada” (NRC, 1997a). Aerosol testing would begin in Minneapolis, with St. Louis studies closely following. Problems occurred immediately in Minneapolis. Efforts to secure homes in which to locate samplers, was met with resistance and “field personnel encountered a considerable number of refusals to cooperate with requests for permission to locate sampling equipment in homes. As many as ten contacts were made for each acceptance” (U.S. Army, 1953a: 14). The Army obtained rosters of police and fire department personnel, and letters from the Minneapolis mayor, the Chief of Civil Defense, and the Minneapolis Air Pollution Control Engineer to serve as introductions to city employees and residents. The letters were delivered to field office personnel for use in securing access to private homes and buildings for equipment location. “Thus, „official sanction? was given to otherwise questionable results”, according to Army records (U.S. Army, 1953a: 28).

Project personnel also canvassed door-to-door in their efforts. Nevertheless, during the initials tests in the residential areas, “the police received numerous calls from residents reporting strange activities in the area….for several evenings in succession, sampling equipment was molested by curious passers-by, and several sampling units were actually found missing from stations” (U.S. Army, 1953a: 29). As the Army notified officials and press of the Minneapolis experiments (assuming their claim of notification is accurate), or as observant local citizens became aware of the tests on their own or through the canvassing efforts, the Army came to experience both open and clandestine public protest of the Minneapolis aerosol studies. The St. Louis study would begin immediately after the Minneapolis study, with some crossover between the two studies, but there would be a dramatic difference in how the two cities were approached, in regard to notification of the public and authorities.

TARGET TWO: ST. LOUIS

The Army contracted with Philip A. Leighton at Stanford Research Institute, and the Ralph M. Parsons Company in Pasadena, California, to design and oversee the St. Louis aerosol study, whereby two 25-square block areas in downtown St. Louis would be sprayed with what was claimed to be “biological simulants”. One formerly classified Army document outlines the 1953-54-test range as a five square mile area (U.S. Army, 1953b: 24) (15)

Additional Army documents note that officials specifically selected a “slum area” in downtown St. Louis (Sawyer, 1994).

According to historian Leonard Cole, the specific neighborhoods were selected to “minimize chances of resistance to the performance of experiments”; thus, [Army officials chose] “a slum where residents are less likely to be educated, inquisitive, or to question authority”, based on intensive local scrutiny in the earlier Minneapolis study (Cole: 64). But perhaps Cole?s analysis is only partly accurate. There are indications that the military had other reasons to keep the St. Louis study secret.

CHARACTERISTICS OF ST. LOUIS HOUSING: 1950

Two specific St. Louis areas were selected for the 1953 study: 1) “The How Area” and 2) “The Item Area”. The How Area was a “densely populated residential area including some commercial and manufacturing areas” near the center of St. Louis, located approximately two miles west of the Mississippi River and approximately one mile from the center of downtown St. Louis (U.S. Army, 1953b: 24) (16)

The How Area boundaries included Grand Boulevard (west), Montgomery St. (north), 22nd (East) and Pine Boulevard (South). The Item Area was selected as a downtown area “encompassing most of the tall buildings in [downtown] St. Louis” (U.S. Army, 1953b: 24). The Item Area was bounded by the Mississippi River (east), Biddle St. (North), 18th St. (West), and Spruce St. (South). Some of the studies during the 1953 test series targeted the entire city of St. Louis (Toxicologic Assessment, 1997b: 253; U.S. Army, 1953b: 24; Appendix A). Indeed, one area was just adjacent to, and the other cut right down the middle of the Pruitt Igoe Housing Project complex, which was a new, imposing housing structure of eleven stories in the midst of a blighted, poverty-stricken area, populated by poor African-Americans. Pruitt-Igoe?s population was also strictly African American, as St. Louis had legally-mandated segregated housing in 1953. The total population in St. Louis City in 1950 was 852,023 (Statistical Abstract, 1951). Thus, the “expanded” tests areas in 1953, indeed those that were citywide, targeted an estimated 852,000 individuals during each exposure, however the areas of concentration that were selected by those who designed the aerosol study, purposely targeted vulnerable populations in St. Louis city.

The How Area testing included six St. Louis city census tracts that covered hundreds of city blocks. Those tract areas included the following:

The Item Area testing included four St. Louis city census tracts. Those tract areas included the following:

Formerly classified Army documents confirm that “ The How Area consists primarily of a densely populated slum district”, whereby “particular precautions” were taken to minimize the “loss of equipment”, and to protect personnel (U.S. Army, 1953b: 27) (17)

Thus, the US Army purposely selected areas where primarily persons of color resided, and further the military anticipated that criminal activity would present particular challenges to staff and equipment because it was an area where “non-whites” primarily resided.

The 1950 United States Census of Housing, Block Statistics Data compared St. Louis city neighborhoods block by block. A total of 23,187 St. Louis residents were targeted in the combined How Area and Item Area studies. When the How Area alone is compared to untested and relatively affluent areas in St. Louis city, as determined by average home value in dollars, there are marked differences in housing and population characteristics. For example, in Census Tract 19A, non-white residents residing in occupied dwellings numbered 30 out of 4,020 persons, totaling .75% of the population in that non-tested tract. In the How Area however, non-white residents in occupied dwellings varied between 67 persons and 4,106, depending on tract. Out of 19,213 total residents in the How Area, nearly 70% or 13,366 were “non-white” (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1950: 4). In the Item Area, the number of non-white residents in occupied dwellings, varied between eight persons and 2,377, varying by census tract. Out of 3,974 total residents in the Item Area, 2,666 or 67%, were” non-white” residents (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1950: 4). Because housing discrimination was an issue that limited availability to people of color to an extraordinary degree in St. Louis in the early 1950s, those areas that were targeted by the military were likely known by officials (and were certainly verifiable through census data), to be areas where persons of color were identified as heads of households. There is thus, a marked racial component to the 1953 aerosol study, whereby poor minority populations in St. Louis, were pointedly targeted for military-sponsored human subject testing.

Army reports were kept secret, and few local officials were notified before tests began, and only if they were essential to advance the project. The National Research Council later claimed that the Army and partner Stanford University needed to elicit cooperation from local authorities (at least those in Minneapolis, presumably) such as police and air pollution control officials, and local staff from the US Weather Bureaus to undertake the studies and avoid problems (NRC, 1997). Yet there is no evidence that any officials beyond the mayor?s office were notified in St. Louis; in fact all evidence indicates that the fewest possible officials were notified of the study. Study coordinators, concocted a cover story to deceive and misinform local officials and not reveal the true nature and purpose of the studies. In fact, “…city officials were told that the work was to obtain data pertinent to smoke screening of cities to prevent aerial observation” (NRC: 118, 274).

The Army project successfully maintained relative secrecy throughout; this may have been due in part to resistance seen in the earlier Minneapolis study. (18)

It is likely, however, that the Army planned all along to maintain a higher level of secrecy in the St. Louis study, than they did in Minneapolis. The Army nevertheless claimed that, “although the St. Louis press was cognizant of the test program being conducted, only a few small articles were printed during the period” (U.S. Army, 1953b: 28) (19)

Purposeful efforts to strictly limit local awareness of the study, kept press attention, public awareness, and thus public protest, to a bare minimum. According to official documents, however, officials from two private companies- both defense contractors- had been informed about the study, even though local public officials, who were responsible for the health and wellbeing of citizens in their communities, were left uninformed. When later asked about the deception, one Army official explained that “„the army didn?t really lie. They just didn?t tell the whole truth?” (Cole, L., 1994: 5).

Thus, officials in the tight-knit group who knew about the plan, including military officials, defense industry insiders, and select members of the scientific establishment, participated in a deception of local officials and the public about aerosol studies that targeted non-suspecting civilians. As a result, the public did not know to hold military officials to the Army's own protocol for human subject testing, as promulgated by the Army Chief of Staff in 1952 (U.S. House, 1977: 178). Indeed, given the existence of the Wilson Memorandum, the military circumvented their own protocol for human subject testing, by omitting important information about the nature of the tests in St. Louis, and not notifying citizens. This important omission would fall under Lo's definition of deception (Lo, B.: 50).

EQUIPMENT, METHODOLOGY, AND PERSONNEL

Personnel at Stanford Research Institute/Stanford University designed an air-sampling unit to be used in the St. Louis and Minneapolis aerosol studies, and they also outlined the overall design of the experiments. Under military contract, Leighton, et al., were required to determine the following criterion:

The sampling units were custom built specifically for the Minneapolis and St. Louis studies. All field and lab activities were the responsibility of the Ralph M. Parsons Company, which also held a contract with the U.S. Army for the project (U.S. Army, 1953a: 12). The metal sampling units were approximately 14 by 14 by 10 inches, with a metal nozzle that extended from the side of the box. A suction motor run by battery made a “ticking and purring” sound, according to a January 20, 1953 article in the Minneapolis Tribune. The article also noted that, in the Minneapolis study, “the Ralph Parsons Company name appear[ed] on the sides of the cars “from which guards watch the boxes” (Minneapolis Tribune, Jan 20, 1953, as cited by U.S. Army, 1953a: 14).

According to Army documents, “the first four tracer tests were planned and supervised jointly by Stanford and Parsons personnel. Subsequent planning and operational supervision were performed by the Parsons field office” (U.S. Army, 1953a: 32). Problems occurred throughout the process, however, and this affected both the scope of the study and the quality of the data. One secret Army report revealed that,

The Army acknowledged that it “discarded” data related to the St. Louis study, but we have no way of knowing if it was for reasons stated. We do know however, that incomplete and missing data was what the National Research Council had to work with, when they examined the process and effects of the St. Louis and Minneapolis studies in 1997.

According to official documents, fifty-three part-time employees worked on the 1953 study in positions related to administrative, meteorology, laboratory, and instruments needs. (20)

The Army reported that it was “difficult to obtain sufficient personnel of any description and in particular responsible people for balloon captain positions. Considering the tight labor market, this situation will undoubtedly continue throughout the period of the project in that city” (U.S. Army, 1953a: 24). The earliest tests were run by “a small group of inexperienced part-time workers”, according to official documents (U.S. Army, 1953a: 32). (21)

Prerequisites for hiring in both the Minneapolis and St. Louis studies, were that “men met minimum security requirements and that each man have a means of transportation” (U.S. Army, 1953a: 35). (22)

Many of those who were employed to participate were college students. Operators of the aerosol generators were selected from “those men possessing some mechanical aptitude and technical background”, as operation of the equipment required “a reasonable degree of mature judgment” (U.S. Army, 1953a). Washington University in St. Louis, had conveniently hired four former Los Alamos scientists; they were likely useful contacts from which to recruit temporary student workers with some technical knowledge. According to official documents, local college students with lab experience were employed in the labs where exposed filters were attached to glass slides; some were civil engineering students from Washington University (U.S. Army, 1953a: 50). An operating manual prepared by Stanford University was used to train men in this capacity. Officials reported that this process went smoothly in Minneapolis, but, “one problem inherent with employment of students, however, is the general dearth of manpower during periods of final examinations and vacations...during this period tests were conducted with some difficulty” (U.S. Army, 1953a: 37). (23)

It is noted repeatedly in official documents that there were concerns related to contamination of the field office and laboratory by equipment used in the field, and measures were taken to avoid this, including storage of equipment at a remote location. In Minneapolis, for example, the contaminated equipment was stored at the home of the “chief of the disperser crew”. “The panel truck used for transportation of the generator and crew during test operations [was] procured from a rental agency also remotely located from the field office” (U.S. Army, 1953a: 41). Even the radios, and batteries used to power the remote generator were segregated from other equipment after use, tested for contamination, decontaminated if necessary outside, and stored away from all the other equipment, “to eliminate any possibility of contamination of field office premises from this source” (U.S. Army, 1953a: 42). The Army claimed that the material sprayed in St. Louis was zinc cadmium sulfide (ZnCdS), with a “fluorescent additive” for ease in lab analysis. Notably, the “fluorescent additive” is left unidentified in official records.

For their tasks, all available men would meet prior to testing in a field office several hours in advance, to obtain directions and field data sheets for the daily operation. The field office for the 1953 tests in St. Louis was at a building in the 5500 block of Pershing Avenue, just north of Forest Park, that served as the temporary headquarters for the Army?s aerosol tests (“Cancer Coincidence”, 1995). Three of the men that served as technicians in the aerosol tests in St. Louis claim that they never knew the nature of the tests, nor to their knowledge, was any other worker informed as to the true nature of the tests. The Army was thus maintaining secrecy down to the lab and field workers conducting the experiments.

After a demonstration, the men and their equipment were then dispatched to various field test areas within the city. From this group, crew captains were selected to train new workers, disseminate instructions and equipment to a small team of workers, and receive information by phone as to location, date, hours, and number of men required at specific tests. Crew captains met in advance of the other men and were given maps that indicated the locations where each field crew worker would set up between one and three sampling units. Radio equipment was issued to crew captains and field crews. (24)

According to official records, the tests started with reports from meteorological stations regarding wind direction and velocity, which was tracked via weather balloons and instruments, prior to “tracer” release. Adjustment of equipment location might occur due to outcome of the wind direction tests. Once test personnel were in place, filters were exposed, samplers were started, and the aerosol generator dispersed the aerosolized material from stationary sources or the backs of slowly moving vehicles.

Philip Leighton, a Stanford University chemist, and the primary author of the study who contracted with the Army on the aerosol project, focused intently on perfecting a certain particulate size for the studies. Leighton required that the fluorescent particles in the aerosol studies be in the 1-5 µ size range” (Leighton, et al., 1965: 334). Fluorescent particles and the optimal sizes were selected in part, because they were easy to observe under a microscope and offered “a very sensitive method of detection and quantitative estimation”, according to a report published by Leighton (Leighton, et al., 1965: 335). Particulate size would take on grave importance to those targeted victims who inhaled the dosages, and Leighton?s true purpose for selection of a specific sized particle may not align with his public narrative. The National Research Council, who was provided data on the St. Louis aerosol study by the Army decades later, noted that, “no reports on the toxicity of inhaled ZnCdS are available in the literature. Because the ZnCdS particles used in the Army?s dispersion studies were so small, the particles could probably be inhaled and deposited deep in the lung…” (NRC, 1997b: 7).

The material (claimed to be zinc cadmium sulfide) that was sprayed by the Stanford labs in the St. Louis study was referred to internally as "FP2266". (25)

FP2266 was manufactured by the New Jersey Zinc Company and the United States Radium Corporation. The United States Radium Corporation, located in New Jersey, had been in legal hot water decades prior, for producing luminescent paint that was used by girls and young female factory workers to paint watch dials in the 1920s. The young women were instructed to lick the paint-brushes prior to painting the hands onto the watches, in order to refine the point of the brush. As a result, the radioactive material in the paint sickened and killed many of the young women (Frame: 1). Radium 226 was mixed with zinc sulfide to make the radioactive powder that the workers used to paint the watch dials, and the compound was used in manufacturing until the 1970s (Frame: 1). It is unknown if “FP2266” was also known as or incorporated Radium 226, the radioactive radium product produced by United States Radium Corporation. Typically, the manufacturer is reflected in the “name” of the compound, whereby the compound might also be referred to as NJZ2266. In the St. Louis study however, Leighton refers to “FP2266”. (26)

FP2266 had a “maximum number of particles between 0.75µ and 3.0µ in diameter” (Leighton, et al., 1965: 335; NRC, 1997b: 141). The fluorescent, fluffy powder varied between yellow and green due to an unidentified additive, and the material glowed brightly under ultraviolet light. Silicate was also added to facilitate dispersal of what was claimed to be 80% ZnS and 20% CdS (NRC, 1997b: 32-3). In an environment with high humidity such as St. Louis, it was often necessary to heat the powder in advance of use to obtain a fluff quality, which made dispersion easier utilizing a blower generator.

After release of the aerosolized material by a blower generator, “a low trajectory free-flight balloon [was] released from the location during tracer dispersal to further define the local wind direction” (U.S. Army, 1953a: 44). “As some scientists launched weather balloons to track wind direction, others sprayed the particles into the air using aerosol generators at street corners and rooftops” (Sawyer, 1994). The particles moved downwind, and some were collected on sampling plates that were placed outdoors and inside buildings, including private homes. Workers would place the black sampling boxes downwind of the aerosol test, stay in their vehicles to watch the boxes, and obtain the necessary data, which would be processed later off-site. Thus, the Army could measure how the cloud of chemical moved through the air in the community, and into structures (Sawyer, 1994). Each release of material was typically one hour long (Venkatram, et al.: 20), and often at night (McElroy, 1997: 1027). Later studies of the releases in St. Louis noted an increase in the “initial size of the plume” immediately after the release of the aerosolized material (McElroy, 1997: 1028).

Machine “operators were furnished chains and locks with which the sampling equipment could be secured to trees, lamp poles, or similar permanent objects”, which limited tampering or theft of equipment by local citizens. One woman in St. Louis recalled the “mysterious black boxes chained to trees just down the block” from her house where she and her four children, as well as hundreds of her neighbors often spent the hot summer evenings outdoors to avoid the interior heat of the house. “I can remember saying, „what are they doing there??...we went up next to them to see if they were ticking” (“Cancer Coincidence, 1995). Indeed, many residents even slept outside to avoid the oppressive summer heat of the tall brick structures that dotted the urban landscape of St. Louis in 1953.

After release of the aerosolized material, the sampling equipment was packed up and removed from the site. According to official Army documents, lab technicians would visually identify and count illuminated microscopic fluorescent particles on the filters using a microscope. The results were documented on “exposure data sheets”, and plotted on a test area map. “The final total dosage data, in addition to virtual wind track vectors, balloon track directions, and aerosol release information, are then plotted on maps of the test area in preparation for more detailed analysis of the test results” (U.S. Army, 1953a: 50). In all, St. Louis “tracer” personnel worked more than 3,000 hours in February and more than 2,500 hours in March 1953. The April-June tests alone totaled 7,511 personnel hours for field and a portion of the laboratory labor (U.S. Army, 1953b: 25) (27)

According to Army reports, the 1953 tests totaled 25,896 personnel hours from the rented field office in St. Louis. According to official records, staff members included a Division Chief, an Office Manager, and a Field Foreman (U.S. Army, 1953a: 14).

TWO DEGREES OF SECRECY: A PARALLEL ST. LOUIS STUDY

A once-classified 1953 Army report (28)

stated that, “all work of a possibly classified nature was performed by cleared personnel away from the St. Louis office, and no special measures incident to handling of classified material were required” (U.S. Army, 1953b: 31). (29)

Here, Army officials hint to a secret parallel study in tandem with the ZnCdS study—indicating additional testing of an even more classified nature, beyond that which is included in the official record. This parallel study required special security clearance for personnel, and a separate, distant location for data analysis than that provided for the initial study. (30)

What is by appearances an off-handed note buried within a lengthy, dry, and formerly classified report, brings up several points and questions, (31)

some of which will be discussed here.

First, it was argued (and continues to be argued by some official sources (32)

that the St. Louis study was defensive, rather than offensive in nature, when official records indicate otherwise. Likewise, it has been argued that military officials in 1953 did not officially recognize the toxicity of ZnCdS (NRC, 1997b). Indeed, officials refer to ZnCdS as a harmless “simulant”. (33)

Were it the case that Army officials believed that ZnCdS was a harmless simulant, than there would have been no discernable need on their part to: 1) suppress press attention 2) notify only a few select local officials on the apparent “need to know basis”, and 3) maintain information related to the study and the results of the study as “classified” (or in this case more accurately, “secret”), which would exempt the information and data from Congress, the public, media, victims, legal interests, and other interested parties, unless there was a separate reason to maintain secrecy. Second, the “special measures” utilizing “special personnel” at a “special, off-site location”, were assigned a higher level of classified secrecy by the Army, than was the rest of the secret study.

Given the large gaps in data (gaps to which the Army admits), and given their own official statement that there was more data and information than is discussed in official documents at that time, it becomes clear that crucial elements of the St. Louis study were omitted in official records. What possible additional aspects of this study are too secret to be classified as “Secret” in official military documents? In other words, what type of research took place in St. Louis that rose to a level classified above “Secret- Security Information”?

THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL REVIEWS THE AEROSOL STUDIES

In 1997, The National Research Council (NRC) (34)

compiled and published the aerosol dispersal data of several U.S. cities including St. Louis and Minneapolis, as a result of Congressional and public pressure.

The Army denied any public health risks associated with the studies, but public and Congressional pressure (including Senator Ted Kennedy, Senator Paul Wellstone and Congressman Richard Gephardt) forced the hand of the Army to release information to concerned citizens. In response, “…the U.S. Army Environmental Hygiene Agency (AEHA) prepared reports that retrospectively assessed the health risk to humans who had been exposed to ZnCdS in those cities” (National Research Council: 2). Again, the Army re-affirmed negative health effects from testing. Later the review was expanded to include public meetings in three cities where ZnCdS was reportedly sprayed, to review Environmental Protection Agency and Centers for Disease Control risk-assessment reports on ZnCdS, and identify gaps in research regarding ZnCdS exposure. The National Research Council “assigned the project to the Committee on Toxicology of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology in the Commission on Life Sciences” (NRC: 3). St. Louis was omitted from the list of meeting locations.

The NRC subcommittee ultimately issued two reports: one for public distribution which included the subtitle, “Answers to Commonly Asked Questions”, and consisted of approximately 15 pages total, and another “technical report” (no subtitle) that comprised 358 pages. The shorter, public distribution report is available through any Internet search by the title, Toxicologic Assessment of the Army’s Zinc Cadmium Sulfide Dispersion Tests: Answers to Commonly Asked Questions. The longer technical report (Toxicologic Assessment of the Army’s Zinc Cadmium Sulfide Dispersion Tests) is referenced through a general Internet search, however it must be purchased online. (35)

Not only are the titles identical, other than the subtitle included on the short report whereby one might easily confuse the short report for the long, but those interested in obtaining the report might infer that a particular party is selling a report that can be obtained online for free, and thus, they would likely obtain only the free, short report. The difference between the reports regarding data is dramatic. The short report provides very little information, and glosses over the tests themselves, health information related to zinc cadmium sulfide exposure, and offers very little (and often conflicting) data.

The 1997 NRC technical report noted that the 1953-54 releases were conducted at the Army designated locations of “How” and “Item” areas in St. Louis (NRC, 1997b: 260-61). Some of the dispersant came from a single point source, and others were dispersed over a length from one point to another (presumably by vehicle), for up to 10,750 yards. (See Appendix A). In the short, public-distributed report, the NRC subcommittee states that “the highest estimated cadmium intake from the zinc cadmium sulfide dispersion tests was 24.4 [micrograms] in St. Louis”, based on a cadmium content of 15% of the ZnCdS compound (NRC, 1997a). The subcommittee also acknowledged, that “the ZnCdS used in the Army studies was composed of about 80% zinc sulfide (ZnS) and 20% cadmium sulfide (CDs) (NRC 1997b: 6; 32). It is unclear whether the NRC should have adjusted their calculation to account for a higher cadmium level.

Conflicting data emerged from the NRC report. There are discrepancies in the report; they note for example, an estimated cadmium exposure in St. Louis of 19.2 micrograms “maximal exposure per person” (NRC, 1997b: 77). Yet, the subcommittee also refers to a calculated “highest estimated potential exposure dose” of 156µ (micrograms) in St. Louis (NRC, 1997a). The 156µ level disputes the NAS? own technical report of 1997, that indicates a level of 1,898 micrograms per cubic meter, as dispersed on Saturday, June, 20, 1953. This level exceeds the levels used in the subcommittee?s calculations in the public report (NRC, 1997a; 1997b). These combined errors indicate a cadmium exposure level of not 24µ, but rather roughly 38µ on just that one individual date in St. Louis. (36)

The 1953 raw data for St. Louis, was not provided in full to the National Research Council when they compiled an Army-supported study on cities sprayed with zinc cadmium sulfide. The NRC acknowledged in their 1995 technical report that complete data had not been provided to them, or that there were errors in calculations. The following statements all appear in the NRC technical report regarding the military?s aerosol studies:

Various parties have requested the data from the Army: House and Senate subcommittees; several members of Congress such as now deceased Senator Paul Wellstone; the National Research Council; and researchers (including this one), yet the full and complete data seems elusive to requestors, being declared either missing, unavailable, or of classified status. During the Clinton administration, the military was ordered to open their books on past human subject testing, and to embrace a new era of transparency. This extraordinary effort, under the direction of President Clinton?s Secretary of Energy, Hazel O?Leary, ushered in unprecedented transparency related to state-sponsored human subject testing. In response to President Clinton?s mandate, the military came forward with thousands of pages of formerly classified studies of a notably sinister nature, involving civilians, children, infants, prisoners, commuters in public spaces, and pregnant women.

Yet for all the revolting revelations, information involving the St. Louis aerosol studies continues to be “missing” and withheld, particularly data from the 1953 study. Indeed, we know little of what took place in 1953. This begs further scrutiny, and suggests that something dark took place that military officials, still believe warrants secrecy. The first series of tests in this St. Louis test study concluded on January 20, 1954, but a decade later and before the shroud of secrecy had been partially lifted, federal officials would once again land in St. Louis to conduct additional studies.

1963 TRACER STUDY

A second series of “tracer studies” began in 1963 in St. Louis, and those involved in this subsequent study included the United States Public Health Service, and the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in Cincinnati, Ohio. According to one insider who worked for the Public Health Service, in the early 1950?s, the U.S. Public Health Service was interested in the public health effects of radiation, and thus, planned at that time to establish a… large radiobiological research unit” (U.S.DOE, 1995).

In the 1963 study, several sites were set up with instruments to measure the levels of aerosolized material that were released into the air. One set of four instruments was attached to a radio tower at KMOX-TV in central downtown St. Louis. The aerosol was released in the “southeast corner of Forest Park” (Pooler, 1966: 677), roughly at the corner of Clayton and Faulkner Roads, according to the 1997 NRC technical report. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Forest Park releases were located at a pond east of the Planetarium in the park (Sawyer, 1994). The Knights of Columbus Building was located near the intersection of South Grand Boulevard and Gravois Road, where aerosol releases were dispersed from the rooftop of the “three story building in the midst of buildings and trees of comparable height” (Pooler, 1966: 677) "Those two sites [were] approximately 2.8 miles apart" (National Research Council, 1997b: 188). Sampling sites surrounded both release sites in circles or arcs up to five miles away to the Mississippi River. “The tracer was generally released for a period of 1 hr” in the 1963 study (Pooler, 1966: 678).

Up to twenty workers were needed to conduct the St. Louis experiments in 1963. A cadre of approximately ten student workers were recruited from the Department of Civil Engineering at Washington University, where Engineering professor Ed Edgerly provided “on-call student help” to the study personnel working on the tests. (Pooler, 1966: 678). Many of the tracer levels were much higher than what they had found in open-air emission tests in the countryside (Pooler, 1966: 681). The author of the study discusses how the “tracer” emissions would rise in a plume, “meandering back and forth in the crosswind direction,…selectively carried aloft by convective motions until finally, when most of the plume has removed from near the ground”, the tracer once again dropped down to ground level (Pooler, 1966). Air levels of zinc cadmium sulfide were measured as high as 7,400 micrograms over a 40 square mile area in a populated area of St. Louis (NRC, 1997b: 127). (37)

A report at the time noted that there were 42 experiments conducted, but only 32 of the experiments, "yielded usable dispersion data". The report stated that, "many of the excluded experiments yielded usable data for which analysis could not be made in the conventional manner used here. A separate publication is planned to report analyses of these data" (McElroy and Pooler, 1968: 5). (38)

POST-STUDY CLAIMS BY OFFICIALS

In July 1994, the military released official documents to Senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minneapolis) and Congressman Richard Gephardt (D-St. Louis), after Senator Wellstone began receiving individual inquiries related to the Minneapolis study from adults who had been targeted in aerosol studies sponsored by the military, and who were convinced that health issues had been caused by those events. Documents provided to the Congressmen confirmed that,

“The smokescreen explanation was concocted to allay suspicions about the strange equipment and activities that passersby might notice. The misinformation effort included planting false news stories” (Cole: 61). Thus, officials involved did not simply engage in secrecy and covert actions targeting specific communities of disenfranchised citizens, but they went beyond that, by issuing false information to media, to deflect criticism and inquiry. The same day as the release of documents to Congressman Wellstone, Army Chemical Division officials claimed in a St. Louis press conference, that the “tests did not present a long-term health risk to the area” (Allen, et al 1994). Army Colonel John Doesburg also stated that, “the tests were aimed at understanding how the atmosphere carried the particles and not at how they affect humans” (Allen, et al., 1994).

What the public did not know, however, was that the ZnCdS particulate size was specifically selected by Leighton to ensure optimal human lung absorption. Leighton?s careful selection of particulate size for the St. Louis aerosol studies was considered at length, based on properties such as inhalation rate and depth. “One Army report notes that the small size of the particles was chosen because it “approximates that which is considered most effective in penetrating into the lungs” (Sawyer, 1994). Yet through the 1990s, the Army has continued to” maintain that the tests harmed no one” (Cole, 1997: 28). (39)

We can examine through a pre-1954 literature search however, whether information related to human toxicity and health effects from cadmium existed when officials began the St. Louis study.

CADMIUM TOXICITY IN THE OPEN LITERATURE (PRE-1954)

“As early as 1656, Stockhusen described what is perhaps the first data on industrial cadmium poisoning”, whereby he found that “cadmium fumes cause gastrointestinal disturbances in foundry workers, these disturbances being accompanied by diarrhea and vomiting” (USPHS: 604). An 1858 study documented cadmium poisoning in three people via inhalation (Sovet, as cited by USPHS: 604), and other studies in 1888, 1893, and 1897 confirmed the Sovet study regarding the toxicity of cadmium, noting digestive and “metabolic disturbances”. Also in the mid 1800s (1865), well-known French physician Claude Bernard wrote An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, where he outlined medical ethics thusly:

After the turn of the century, cadmium research continued whereby “investigations of poisoning caused by human exposure to cadmium” were reported in the literature by Chajes (1929), Fisher (1926), Lewin (1929), Gadamer (1934), Schwarz and Otto (1925), Starkenstein, Rost, and Pohl (1929), Otto (1925), and Leschke (1934), among others. Many other investigations that involved animal studies (too numerous to mention here), bolstered the human studies related to the toxicological effects of cadmium. A 1923 report of a fatal case of cadmium exposure, noted that the victim experienced “dryness of the throat, headache, rapid pulse, nausea, and shivering, with brown discoloration of the urine” prior to death (Legge, as cited by Bridge, 1929: 1144). A number of other studies around the same time, noted similar symptoms as well as influenza-like symptoms.

By 1929, Lewin and others found that exposure to cadmium was related to increased salivation, choking attacks, persistent vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and tenesmus. “These are the symptoms, according to most investigators, which occur most frequently in cases of poisoning due to cadmium” (USPHS, 1942: 605). One investigator noted that “respiration was retarded” due to exposure, and that attacks of vertigo and loss of consciousness occur. “According to Athanasiu and Langlois, “cadmium paralyses the central nervous system” (USPHS, 1942: 605). Another 1929 study of cadmium toxicity in the workplace echoed Lewin et al?s findings: “the part played by inhaled dust in the etiology of cancer of the bladder cannot be ignored…a few fatal cases of cancer of the bladder have also been noted among pitch workers. Their occurrence may be of importance” (Bridge, 1929: 1146). Leon Prodan argued in 1932 that “cadmium is a dangerous substance and that the type of damage to be expected is of such critical nature as to indicate the avoidance of the inhalation or ingestion of even small amounts of cadmium” (Prodan, 1932; as cited by Cole, 1997: 26). Cadmium was found to cause serious lung damage and according to Prodan, “one may conclude that cadmium, no matter how small the amount taken in the lungs, causes pathologic changes…there is, therefore, no permissible amount of cadmium” (Prodan, 1932; as cited by Cole, 1997: 27).

A 1937 study outlined two human fatalities from cadmium poisoning in Canada (Bulmer, as cited in The British Medical Journal: 33). Several years later in 1942, Hubert Smith of the Harvard Law and Medical Schools wrote that “ethical and legal principles required „full disclosure of material facts? and the securing of the „enlightened consent? of the human subject” thusly,

By 1942, the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) described the symptoms of cadmium poisoning specifically through inhalation:

The USPHS study noted numerous fatalities involved from cadmium exposure, which included liver and kidney effects, as well as degenerative changes leading to necrosis.

In 1947, Barrett, et al., affirmed the earlier cadmium toxicity studies, and found cadmium inhalation to be fatal to humans. Barrett?s animal studies (also 1947), supported the human studies, determining that mortality in animals was “proportional to the product of the duration of exposure and the concentration of inhaled cadmium” (ATSDR: 19). In 1948, The British Medical Journal described the toxicological pathways of cadmium that leads to death in animals and humans alike. Notably, lesions in the lungs and pulmonary edema which lasts for approximately three days, progresses into pneumonitis for ten days, and then the exposed individual will exhibit a string of symptoms which continue for reportedly four years or more.

Permanent lung damage is the result of cadmium exposure in animal studies. The long-term symptoms described by the journal includes “vague motor difficulties, pain in the lower limbs, pelvis, and groin, and [by] striae in the long bones…loss of appetite and weight, constipation, fatigue, headache” and perhaps most notably, “a yellow cadmium ring on the teeth” (The Toxicity of Cadmium: 33). (40)

If medical personnel are aware that a patient has been exposed to cadmium, they can not only see indicators of toxicity in terms of not only symptomology, but also the visual cue of a yellow cadmium line on the teeth. As well, cadmium was at that time, measurable in blood and urine. (41)

This was outlined in the medical literature as early as 1919, in The Journal of Pharmacology (The Toxicity of Cadmium: 33).

By 1950, L. Friberg published a study regarding the poisoning of workers in a cadmium battery factory (ATSDR: 17). In that toxicological study, exposure occurred through inhalation of fumes or cadmium dust, and a resultant pneumonia was the direct cause of death. The American Medical Association published various articles in the 1950s, and a list of principles in 1957, that echoed the earlier calls for full disclosure of human experimentation, voluntary consent and agreement of those being tested as a requirement, ability of the patient to terminate the experiment at any time, avoidance of conflict of interest by the physician/experimenter, that the “danger of each experiment must have been investigated previously by means of animal experimentation”, and the provision that the test must be performed under “proper medical protection and management”( U.S. House, 1994: 124).

Beton, et al. (1966) using a technique similar to Barrett?s earlier study, calculated fatal human doses of cadmium in the air. A 1976 study by Patwardhan and Finckh “prompted Elinder (1986b) to estimate that an exposure of 1-5 mg/m3 for 8 hours could be immediately dangerous. (ATSDR: 18). Even the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) which would run their own studies of ZnCdS in St. Louis in the 1960s, despite that they reported at least two decades prior in their own literature, a high number of cadmium toxicity cases and studies in the literature (they reference 109 such studies). In fact, the USPHS argued that cadmium exposure should be prevented at all costs. Their report tracked “all the known cases of cadmium poisoning which have been reported up to the present time” between 1858 and 1941, which resulted in 346 reported poisoning incidents, and 58 inhalation poisoning events.

Yet, the USPHS would engage in a ZnCdS study in St. Louis in 1963, just one decade after the Army completed their study. Later studies (Friberg 1950; Bonnell 1955; Adams, et al. 1969; Liu, et al. 1985; Rose et al. 1992) found that workers exposed to cadmium report “chronic rhinitis and impairment or the loss of the sense of smell” (ATSDR: 44). In animal studies, not only has respiratory injury been reported, but also persistent damage has been reported “from a single acute exposure” (ATSDR: 45). According to the Agencies for Toxic Substances and Disease registry, the arm of the federal Centers for Disease Control that studies and addresses issues of toxins and public exposure to toxins, inhalation of cadmium can intensely irritate lung tissue, with delayed or latent effects. Initial exposure (up to two hours), produces symptoms including coughing, and throat and mucosa irritation. Symptoms thereafter become progressively worse:

Immediate and delayed (one week) post exposure symptoms thus present as flu-like symptoms, and include pulmonary problems that may advance to pneumonia. Long-term symptoms of workers exposed to cadmium through inhalation, revealed “progressive pulmonary fibrosis”, emphysema, and impaired respiratory function, unimproved even nine years after exposure (ATSDR: 21).

L. Arthur Spomer, a former researcher with the Army Chemical Corps, who conducted atmospheric tracer studies at Deseret Test Center as a meteorologist, reportedly appealed to the officers in charge of the experiments about the hazards related to its use, and was ignored (Cole, 1997). Later, as a professor in the School of Agriculture at the University of Illinois, Spomer published a study arguing that ZnCdS was a dangerous compound to use in field experiments, saying that it presented a „potential health hazard to experimenters and other humans exposed to it'” (Spomer, 1973; as cited by Allen and Best and Allen, 1994). Spomer explained the nature of symptoms related to cadmium exposure to military officials with an appeal to stop its use in military field studies.

Given Spomer's study and supported by the majority of the other toxicology studies related to cadmium, if exposed persons are not notified in advance of potential exposure to ZnCdS, and medical personnel are uninformed of acute ZnCdS exposure through inhalation, it will likely result in incorrect treatment for the misdiagnosed illness, which by all appearances presents as flu, pneumonia, or other respiratory ailments. Not only might this create additional complications for the patient, but also it would not address the initial episode of toxicity. Although the issue of consent is not analyzed at length in this paper, it is an element of importance in this and hundreds of other military-sponsored studies on humans during the Cold War, and thus, the issue warrants some attention. One thing is clear, published health studies addressed the severe human toxicity of cadmium at least one hundred years prior to the secret US Army aerosol studies in St. Louis.

STANDARDS OF THE TIMES

One argument that surfaces in testimony and contemporary sources regarding military-sponsored human subject testing during the Cold War, asserts that ethical standards were either non-existent or unclear in 1953. In light of the highly publicized Nuremberg Code that resulted from the trials of German physicians who engaged in atrocious human experimentation, most familiar with the issue of human experimentation at least have a limited appreciation of the Nuremberg Code. Other international codes followed Nuremberg, such as the Geneva Protocol. Nevertheless, in 1994, in a testimony before a Congressional investigative committee, David J. Rothman of Columbia University, challenged the assumptions that ethical standards in 1953 were non-existent.

In other words, according to Rothman, officials chose to ignore Nuremberg. In 1942, Hubert Smith of the Harvard Law and Medical Schools wrote that, “ethical and legal principles required „full disclosure of material facts? and the securing of the „enlightened consent? of the human subject”:

Four years later (1946), the American Medical Association adopted an ethical code recognizing a voluntary consent requirement in research, along with disclosure regarding the danger of the study, and the necessary provision of proper medical protection and management of the individuals tested (U.S. House, 1994: 120). Indeed, in the 1940s and 1950s, “the ethical requirements for obtaining consent prior to experimentation were also widely recognized in scholarly publications” (U.S. House, 1994: 122). In 1949, Louis John Reagan wrote in Doctor and Patient and the Law, that, The physician must keep abreast of medical progress, but he is responsible if he goes beyond the usual and standard procedures to the point of experimentation. If such treatment is considered indicated, it should not be undertaken until consultation has been had and until the patient has signed a paper acknowledging and assuming the risk (U.S. House, 1994: 122). In 1950, Carl Wiggers, Dean of Case Western Reserve Medical School, an academy that would ultimately be involved with human subject testing on behalf of the military, published Basic Ethical Principles for the Conduct of Human Experimentation, where he noted that,

What is clear, is that 1) health studies emphasizing the high level of human toxicity of cadmium, 2) consistent flow of reports in the literature emphasizing a fundamental need for informed consent, along with 3) established international guidelines for human health studies in Nuremberg and Geneva, and 4) the military's own Wilson Memorandum, all have a notable presence either in the literature of the times or was a recognized policy within the military structure itself. Thus, Rothman?s assertion seems correct, in that American government scientists engaged in human subject experimentation without consent of the victims, did so knowingly, and chose to violate published ethical standards and codes. Indeed, “…the voluntary consent requirement was a well-established medico-legal obligation of physicians”, according to Rothman (U.S. House, 1994: 119).

In other words, government officials placed military goals above the health of targeted citizens, and above the laws of the times. St. Louis residents would come in the 1990s to find out the partial truth of the military tests that targeted their neighborhoods, and officials once again assured them that there was no concern.

It would appear by military claims that the St. Louis study was less dramatic than many other studies conducted by the military and its contractors, as military officials assured the public that a “harmless” ZnCdS had been sprayed. St. Louis would, by all accounts scarcely receive mention in the literature and formal investigations that discuss military-sponsored chemical tests involving civilians. Although St. Louis shared a brief, albeit ugly experience with a few cities such as Minneapolis, and Ottawa, Canada, in 1953 (and again in 1963), what occurred in St. Louis was much more than meets the eye, and it is deserving of its own case study and analysis. Yet officials are still tight-lipped, six decades later, about events in St. Louis.

St. Louis was but a sliver - albeit an important one - of a massive, complex, and coordinated top secret effort to expand military technology exponentially, to a degree unmatched in U.S. history. St. Louis was, in fact, tied to an extraordinary military-industrial-academic complex and an exceedingly powerful, top-secret network referred to here as the Manhattan-Rochester Coalition- a professional group that secretly sprang out of World War II. The St. Louis study may have involved far more than biological “simulants”, per the official military talking point. There is indication of a secret study conducted in tandem to the “official” military-sponsored St. Louis aerosol study. (43)

The second study, which for some reason warrants even more secrecy than its parallel study, appears to have been connected to a new type of deadly nuclear weapon, one of many being developed by the coalition, to be tested on unsuspecting residents of St. Louis, Missouri, at the urging of Manhattan-Rochester Coalition member Joseph G. Hamilton.


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