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Even in Canadian and U.S. documents, the tests were referred to as biological and chemical, when documents suggest they actually involved combining the two 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 experiments as part of a tripartite agreement it held with the U.S. and England. The Pentagon, however, never informed the federal government that it would be spraying a carcinogen (cadmium) on Winnipeg, a city with approximately 300,000 people in 1950, according to Martino-Taylor’s research.

The chemicals were odourless, colourless and so small that they wouldn’t have been visible to the naked eye. The small size of the particles may have made them more dangerous, according to the book, because of how deep they could become lodged in the human respiratory system.

But when the U.S. Army returned in 1964 for tests in Alberta a memo from Canadian officials expressed concern that an “American aircraft was emitting distinctly visible emissions,” Martino-Taylor said.

It was in Suffield where the U.S. Army suggested advancing some of its experiments to include phosphorus-32, a radioactive material, and VX, a nerve agent which was recently used to assassinate Kim Jong Nam, the brother of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The U.S. was working on producing a radioactive nerve agent out of the two properties. Internal memos make note of plans to have 100 pounds of VX delivered to Suffield.