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.

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.

In her research, she found that the greatest concentration of spraying in St Louis was at the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex, which was home to 10,000 low income residents.  She said that 70 per cent of those residents were children under the age of 12.

Professor Martino-Taylor became interested in the topic after hearing independent reports of cancers among city residents living in those areas at the time.

'This was a violation of all medical ethics, all international codes, and the military's own policy at that time,'