How The St. Louis Nuclear Waste Problem Is Ignoring Black People

Imagine waking up to find men in hazmat suits on rooftops and station wagons in your neighborhood, spraying an unknown chemical into your front yard. While this sounds like the plot of a horror movie, it’s the very real recollection of former residents of a St. Louis housing complex. An ongoing investigation by The Missouri Independent, The Associated Press and independent media outlet MuckRock has uncovered substantial evidence indicating that during the rush to create the atomic bomb, the government and private companies covertly tested and dumped nuclear waste in neighborhoods of St. Louis near a Uranium processing plant. Hundreds of pages of internal memos recently analyzed by the AP revealed “inspection reports and other items dating to the early 1950s, found nonchalance and indifference to the risks of materials used in the development of nuclear weapons during and after World War II.” A book published in 2017 found evidence that pregnant women and school-age children were also subject to secret radiation testing during this time. Zinc cadmium sulfide was also reportedly tested in at least three dozen other communities throughout St. Louis, which the army referenced as “densely populated slums,” shedding light on the socioeconomic makeup of areas selected for testing.