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As citizens and activists sound the alarm about radioactive sites in north 51���� County and St. Charles County and officeholders on both sides of the aisle respond with calls for action, a group of city residents is asking: “What about us?”

They are the former residents of the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex, which gained a national reputation when it became so decrepit and crime-ridden that the federal government moved everyone out and demolished all of its 33 high-rises. The implosions, starting in 1972 and captured by news photographers, became symbols of federal ineptitude when it came to providing public housing.

Former residents don’t remember Pruitt-Igoe that way. For many years, families living there formed a tight-knit community where they played, picnicked and watched out for one another, especially when it came to the kids.

But even in those happy times in the 1950s, residents were falling prey to outside forces. In 1994, the government released documents revealing that contract workers had sprayed zinc cadmium sulfide, a potential carcinogen, into the air surrounding Pruitt-Igoe and in other places in 51���� as well. It was part of a Cold War-era military experiment.

The group that has dubbed itself PHACTS (Pruitt-Igoe Historical Accounting, Compensation, and Truth Seeking) is made up of veteran community activists, former residents and Elkin Kistner, an attorney who had earlier filed an unsuccessful class action suit on behalf of those residents. They were children in the 1950s when they saw unidentified workers spraying a substance into the air that created a fog-like mist around the buildings and common spaces where they lived and played.

Chester Deanes, now 75, and Ben Phillips, 73, said they did not think much about the work at the time, believing it might be about mosquito control. At that time, and across the nation, trucks would drive through urban and suburban streets spraying dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) , a pesticide that would leave a thick fog behind.

DDT came under suspicion as a carcinogen in a very public way, and much was written about it, eventually leading to a ban in 1972. Zinc cadmium sulfide was a much lesser-known chemical compound, and because it was part of Cold War military experiments, its application was kept secret.

Zinc cadmium sulfide also differed from DDT in that it had radiological properties. Many involved in the experimentation with this substance had also been involved in the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb used against the Japanese to end World War II.

After the war ended, scientists were asked to keep applying their research to other avenues as a means of keeping pace with the Soviets who were in an arms race with the U.S.

Lies and smoke screens

What the Army was up to in 51���� came to light gradually.

Locally it came through reporting in 1994 from Bill Allen and Jon Sawyer and published in the Post-Dispatch. The duo got hold of a University of Illinois study written by L. Arthur Spomer and published in the journal Atmospheric Environment. Spomer had gathered data from more than 150 scientific studies that described cadmium poisoning.

Many of those studies had been conducted before the tests in 51����. So the military might have known and perhaps should have known it was dangerous.

Sawyer and Allen also found that Army officials had lied to city leaders about the tests.

They talked about wanting to learn if “smoke screens” would protect the city from Russian bomber attacks. Instead, the reporters found documents admitting this was a cover story for conducting chemical warfare tests.

In its reports and letters, Sawyer and Allen wrote, the Army referred to “the lack of toxicity of cadmium sulfide” and “the harmless aerosol.” The reporters also found that zinc cadmium sulfide was also used in 1963-65 by the U.S. Public Health Service, involving releases from a pond east of the Planetarium in Forest Park.

To this day, no one knows how many people were exposed to zinc cadmium sulfide and to what extent they were exposed to it. Many factors enter into that equation including how much was released in a particular test, where and how the wind was blowing.

Both the city and the Army have said they have no evidence that anyone was harmed. But how hard did they look? That remains a mystery.

As the testing came to light, it created anxiety among residents and also workers involved in the spraying.

“Why did they use us as guinea pigs?” Helen Floyd, a former Pruitt-Igoe resident asked reporter Allen. “I just don’t understand that thinking. That’s cold-hearted.”

George Branson, then 69, of St. Charles, and Paul Schipke, 64, of Oakville, told Allen they had been hired as technicians to monitor black boxes that tracked the chemical clouds that were released in 1953. Both were diagnosed with bladder cancer in 1990.

The coincidence led them to wonder if they were exposed to zinc cadmium sulfide and whether it led to a series of cellular events that led to the disease.

More revelations

The furor died down until 2012, when Lisa Martino-Taylor presented a colloquium on findings from her doctoral dissertation at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Martino-Taylor had spent several years filing Freedom of Information Act requests and researching government documents. She discovered that the tests were part of a radiological weapons development program that likely spread radioactive materials in the environs.

What she found led her to conclude the government engaged in “unethical and harmful acts” against marginalized communities that would “disable critical analysis and prevent both internal and external dissent of harmful organizational actions.”

That’s academic speak for a massive cover-up.

In September 2012, then-Missouri Sens. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, and Roy Blunt, a Republican, called on the U.S. Army to conduct an investigation and address whether anyone had been harmed.

McCaskill wrote to the Army: “The impacted communities ... are reasonably anxious about the long-term health impacts the tests may have had on those exposed to the airborne chemicals.” In his own letter, Blunt described himself as “deeply troubled.”

Just over a month later, Katharine Hammack, then-assistant secretary of the Army, responded with a letter stating that it had reviewed several assessments and found no health risk.

What remains unclear are the studies and data the Army used to reach that conclusion. McCaskill in a recent email said she has no memory about the request and response. Blunt so far has not responded to a request for a comment.

But that was not going to be that. Phillips, the former Pruitt-Igoe resident, got in touch with Kistner, the attorney. Late in 2012, they found other former residents and filed a class-action suit in 51���� Circuit Court against contractors the Army engaged to conduct the tests.

Kistner knew he was facing an uphill battle, and he was proven right. The court found that the feds are protected from such suits and so are the contractors it hires. Case dismissed.

“It is hard to believe the federal government could be engaged with this stuff without the residents’ knowledge or consent. Then when they assert claims, the law as it stands says they can’t even be investigated through discovery,” Kistner said.

Testing spawns a documentary

Phillips would persevere. He couldn’t stop thinking about his friends and family.

“Nearly every funeral I had gone to (among former residents) was a cancerous death,” he said.

Enter stage right, Damien D. Smith, a native 51����an and a decorated director, producer and actor. (You might have seen him in “Snowfall,” a crime drama on the FX network.)

Smith’s beloved grandma, Sarah Barnes, had lived in Pruitt-Igoe. Smith included her, Phillips, Deanes (another party in the class-action suit) and several others in a one-hour documentary titled “Target: 51���� Vol. 1.”

It was shown as part of the 51���� International Film Festival in 2021 and followed by a discussion with Smith and some of the cast members. Their accounts were vivid and enhanced by photographs showing Pruitt-Igoe from back in the day, maps illustrating the extent of the spraying and workers in hazmat suits.

One who gave an account was Tony Perkins, a man afflicted with keloids (swelled scar tissue) that produced baseball-sized growths on his face and neck. His problems started with a childhood injury, but Perkins and his mother believe his condition may have been exacerbated by his exposure to the zinc cadmium sulfide.

Deanes said his younger brother, Cedric, suffered a series of maladies that led to his death at age 58 in 2015.

Again, more attention paid to the former Pruitt-Igoe residents and their concerns, but nothing happening to address them.

Hope renewed

Then something most unusual occurred this summer. Bipartisanship developed over a different environmental concern: compensating victims of government-caused nuclear contamination originating from the Manhattan Project, including in the 51���� region.

Spurred in part by new reporting on 51����’ nuclear legacy by The Missouri Independent and MuckRock, both nonprofit news gathering organizations; and The Associated Press; U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, both Republicans; and U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, D-51����, called on Congress to act.

In July, Hawley secured passage of a measure that would expand the existing Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. If the U.S. House signs off, people with a medical condition linked to nuclear radiation exposure and who were “physically present in an affected area” — defined by 20 ZIP codes — for at least two years after Jan. 1, 1949, could be eligible for federal compensation. The measure drew an endorsement from President Joe Biden.

If Republicans and Democrats can unite over such a matter, why not do the same for the former Pruitt-Igoe residents?

Phillips, a former city marshal, had long been engaged in city politics and governance, and has good working relationships with officeholders and their family members across the region. He has started to call in some chits. The PHACTS working group created press releases and talking points. They got on a radio talk show last week and have another set for Tuesday.

PHACTS is also hosting a panel discussion and showing of Target 51���� at 6 p.m. Thursday at St. Alphonsus Liguori Rock Catholic Church, 1118 North Grand Boulevard, barely more than a mile from the old Pruitt-Igoe site.

Will it be enough to move key legislators? And what is that they hope to achieve?

“Well, we want transparency,” Phillips said. “We want to know what happened and want a study that will identify health issues in our community.”

What about compensation? Well sure, Phillips and Deanes said, but they understand it might be difficult to get Congress to cut checks to families straight up.

Still, Deanes said legislators should step up to invest in education, housing, medical services and discounts on property taxes for residents harmed by the testing.

“A short-term payment won’t do it,” he said.

And one more ask: “Reveal the truth,” Deanes said, “and apologize.”

Richard H. Weiss, is a former editor and reporter for the 51����. He is chair of the nonprofit River City Journalism Fund. For more about the fund, which seeks to support journalism in 51����, please see .