Books assigned UF500-515 Weapons systems Library of Congress subclass call numbers are few in number here in the Wellington & Madeleine Spence Memorial Library on the Thompson campus of the University College of the North (UCN) here in Northern Manitoba. So I tend to notice when a new one comes in for placement near the end of our stacks in the compact shelving at the back of the library. In January 2018, a slim 211-page book titled Behind the Fog: How the U.S. Cold War Radiological Weapons Program Exposed Innocent Americans, written by Lisa Martino-Taylor, arrived. My handwritten “Date Due” notations in the book says I have borrowed it nine times between then and June 30 of last year. While it is not the most most compelling prose ever written, the subject matter is compelling, at least in small doses.
Martino-Taylor is a public sociologist at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She has worked on issues of heavy metals poisoning in Herculaneum, Missouri, testified before congress in Lima, Peru about the lead poisoning of children by the Doe Run Mining Company in La Oroya, worked with residents near Times Beach and in Ellisville, Missouri regarding dioxin and PCB contamination related to Agent Orange production, and organized and engaged in ethnographic research in Ferguson, Missouri.
Martino-Taylor earned her doctorate in sociology at the University of Missouri-Columbia and researches issues related to social and environmental justice, inequality, social movements, elite deviance, and U.S. military development and testing of chemical, biological and radiological weapons. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Radiation and Public Health Project in New York.
She uncovered the information when she accessed American military documents that were previously classified. And it wasn’t just Americans exposed to the radiological weapons program testing inked to weaponry involving radioactive components meant to attack the Soviet Union. The United States Army secretly sprayed six kilograms of zinc cadmium sulfide onto unsuspecting residents of Winnipeg from U.S. Army planes between July 9, 1953 and Aug. 1, 1953. The U.S. Army returned 11 years later and repeated the experiments in Suffield and Medicine Hat, Alberta.
Canadian municipal governments had no knowledge of these experiments, according to documents obtained by Martino-Taylor. 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.” Winnipeg city council approved the plan by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps to examine radiation fallout and conduct “chemical and cloud dispersal during the summer of 1953 at a meeting on Feb. 2, 1953.
The tests were to explore combining biological and chemical weapons 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 Winnipeg and later Alberta experiments as part of a tripartite agreement with the United States and Great Britain.
In an Oct. 13, 2017 editorial headlined, “We were Cold War guinea pigs” the Winnipeg Free Press asked, “Was the health of Winnipeggers harmed? A critical question, given that the three weeks during which Winnipeg received its secret carcinogenic shower were in July, a time when many Winnipeggers were outdoors with bare skin exposed, backyard gardens were growing vegetables that were later consumed, and the chemicals would have landed in swimming pools frequented by swimmers.
“The answer seems to be that it’s likely, but not certain, the health of Winnipeggers was not seriously affected by the dusting of zinc cadmium sulfide.
“There’s been extensive research on the possible health effects of the tests because Winnipeg was only one of 33 areas in Canada and the U.S. chosen as a target for the experiment. In the late 1990s, the effect on humans of the tests was thoroughly studied in the U.S. by a committee of the National Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering. It is a private, non-profit organization. It’s not connected to the U.S. military.
“‘After an exhaustive, independent review requested by Congress we have found no evidence that exposure to zinc cadmium sulfide at these levels could cause people to become sick,’ committee chair Rogene Henderson said when the report came out in 1997.
“But the committee also noted it was unable to perform follow-up studies to track the health status of those exposed because it would be extremely difficult to identify the people who were affected and to determine their past exposures to zinc cadmium sulfide. Even if they were found, there is a lack of data on their health before, during and after exposure. And it would take a huge sample of exposed residents to detect even a small increase in health problems.
“Copies of the complete report are available online under the title “Toxicological Assessment of the Army’s Zinc Cadmium Sulfide Dispersion Tests.”
“While Winnipeggers may be relieved that the 1953 tests likely didn’t physically harm them or their relatives, we’re left with the unnerving realization that the U.S. military felt entitled to spray chemicals secretly on Winnipeg. One can only hope such secrecy is a relic of the Cold War, and future tests would be conducted only with fully informed consent of the allied countries.”
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