By Emily Anne Epstein

Daily Mail

The United States Military conducted top secret experiments on the citizens of St. Louis, Missouri, for years, exposing them to radioactive compounds, a researcher has claimed.

While it was known that the government sprayed ‘harmless’ zinc cadmium silfide particles over the general population in St Louis, Professor Lisa Martino-Taylor, a sociologist at St. Louis Community College, claims that a radioactive additive was also mixed with the compound.

She has accrued detailed descriptions as well as photographs of the spraying which exposed the unwitting public, predominantly in low-income and minority communities, to radioactive particles.

Scroll down for video

Test: Sociologist Lisa Martino-Taylor, right, a sociologist at St. Louis Community College, has spent years tracking down declassified documents to uncover the lengths which the US experimented on people without their knowing. At left, cadmium sulfide, the ‘harmless’ chemical sprayed on the public is pictured

Spray: She has accrued detailed descriptions as well as photographs of the spraying, which took place as part of Manhattan-Rochester Coalition, which was an operation that dispersed zinc cadmium silfide particles over the general population, a compound that was presented as completely safe

‘The study was secretive for reason. They didn’t have volunteers stepping up and saying yeah, I’ll breathe zinc cadmium sulfide with radioactive particles,’ said Professor Martino-Taylor to KSDK.

Through her research, she found photographs of how the particles were distributed from 1953-1954 and 1963-1965.

In Corpus Christi, the chemical was dropped from airplanes over large swathes of city.  In St Louis, the Army put chemical sprayers on buildings, like schools and public housing projects, and mounted them in station wagons for mobile use.

Despite the extent of the experiment, local politicians were not notified about the content of the testing. The people of St Louis were told that the Army was testing smoke screens to protect cities from a Russian attack.

‘It was pretty shocking. The level of duplicity and secrecy. Clearly they went to great lengths to deceive people,’ Professor Martino-Taylor said.

Controversial: But Professor Martino-Taylor says that it wasn’t just the ‘harmless’ compound, radioactive particles were also sprayed on the unwitting public. A woman refills the spray canisters in this archive picture