U.S. & Canada Held Radioactive, Biological and Chemical Tests at Home & Abroad

While the Canadian federal government appears not to have known of the use of radioactive material in tests carried out by the U.S. in 1953, it was part of other projects involving radioactive, chemical, and biological experiments with the United States carried out in Canada and Panama from the 1940s to the 1960s, mostly under Liberal governments based on when these tests and experiments were done. 

The U.S. Army secretly dumped a carcinogen on unknowing Canadians in Winnipeg and Alberta during the Cold War in testing linked to weaponry involving radioactive components meant to attack the Soviet Union, according to classified documents revealed in a new book. Between July 9, 1953 and Aug 1, 1953, six kilograms of zinc cadmium sulfide was sprayed onto unsuspecting citizens of Winnipeg from U.S. Army planes. The Army returned 11 years later and repeated the experiments in Suffield, Alta. and Medicine Hat, Alta., according to Lisa Martino-Taylor.

Local governments had no knowledge of these experiments, according to documents obtained by Martino-Taylor, a professor of sociology at St. Louis Community College and author of “Behind the Fog: How the U.S. Cold War Radiological Weapons Program Exposed Innocent Americans.” Instead, they were fed a cover story by the Pentagon. “In Winnipeg, they said they were testing what they characterized as a chemical fog to protect Winnipeg in the event of a Russian attack,” Martino-Taylor said. “They characterized it as a defensive study when it was actually an offensive study.”

Even in Canadian and U.S. documents, the tests were referred to as biological and chemical, when documents suggest they actually involved combining the two with radiological components to form combination weapons. The zinc cadmium sulfide acted as a fluorescent tracer which would help the U.S. Army determine how radioactive fallout from a weapon used on the Soviets would travel through wind currents, Martino-Taylor said. Canada participated in the open-air experiments as part of a tripartite agreement it held with the U.S. and England. The Pentagon, however, never informed the federal government that it would be spraying a carcinogen (cadmium) on Winnipeg, a city with approximately 300,000 people in 1950, according to Martino-Taylor’s research. ...

It was in Suffield where the U.S. Army suggested advancing some of its experiments to include phosphorus-32, a radioactive material, and VX, a nerve agent which was recently used to assassinate Kim Jong Nam, the brother of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The U.S. was working on producing a radioactive nerve agent out of the two properties. Internal memos make note of plans to have 100 pounds of VX delivered to Suffield.Another 1964 memo from Suffield mentioned the U.S. Army wanted to visit Suffield to “discuss the use of radioactive tracer techniques in chemical weapons trials.” In preparation for other tests involving BG, a bacteria that is supposed to be harmless, the U.S. Army outlined the number of hospitals and hospital beds available in the area. ...

On their own soil, the U.S. Army experiments were even more severe. Radioactive material was injected into hospital patients without their consent and pregnant women in Nashville were given a radioactive cocktail to ingest so that researchers could determine if it could be passed on to their babies. Children were fed radioactive oatmeal as part of a “science club,” Martino-Taylor said, and were given Mickey Mouse watches and baseball tickets for their continued participation. ...

Canada has a long history of subjecting its people to questionable and dangerous experiments. During the Second World War, mustard gas tests were conducted on 3,000 volunteers at a military base in Suffield. In the 1960s, CIA experiments conducted in Quebec on unknowing subjects analyzed whether it was possible — with the use of LSD and electroshocks — to eliminate memories and build them back up. Decades later, it’s still unknown what effect the spraying had on people. In 1994, Manitoba’s Chief Medical Officer found a “negligible risk to the general population.” In her research, however, Martino-Taylor found that Phillip Leighton,the open-air radiological weapons expert who designed the experiments, called the compound “toxic” and said it came in a box with a poison label. ...

One St. Louis woman told The Associated Press that she remembers being sprayed with a fine powder by an airplane. She’s suffered from breast, thyroid, skin and uterine cancer. Another said she was born in a St. Louis building where the powder was dispersed from the rooftops. Four of her 11 siblings later died from cancer.

Three Democratic members of Congress, who represent the areas where testing took place in Missouri, California and Tennessee have demanded answers since the book’s release. None have been given, Martino-Taylor said. 

http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/u-s-secretly-tested-carcinogen-in-we...