Two St. Louis men doubt the Army’s claim that no harm resulted from the government’s secret testing of zinc cadmium sulfide at the housing complex where they grew up in the 1950s and 1960s.

“We were experimented on. That was a plan. And it wasn’t an accident,” Ben Phillips, 73, told The Associated Press, recalling as a child seeing men in hazmat suits spraying what looked like smoke from the roofs of high-rise buildings in his low-income, majority Black neighborhood.

The Pruitt-Igoe housing complex where Phillips and 75-year-old Chester Deanes grew up was one of nearly three dozen locations where Army documents reveal the government conducted Cold War-era testing without alerting residents.

“We were living in so-called poverty. That’s why they did it. They have been experimenting on those living on the edge since I’ve known America. And of course they could get away with it because they didn’t tell anyone,” Deanes said.

Phillips and Deanes, co-founders of PHACTS ( an acronym for Pruitt-Igoe Historical Accounting, Compensation, and Truth Seeking), seek government compensation and additional health studies.

According to the government, the experiment involved spraying the potential carcinogen from the tops of buildings and the backs of station wagons to simulate what would happen in a biological weapons attack.

An Army spokesperson told the AP assessments determined “that exposure would not pose a health risk,” and follow-up independent studies found no reason for concern. At worst, the chemicals could cause kidney and bone toxicity and lung cancer. But evidence shows that spraying did not harm anyone in St. Louis, the Army insists.

However, Deanes and Phillips know of many premature deaths and illnesses that they suspect are connected to the experiment. Phillips’ mother died of cancer, he developed a benign tumor that caused hearing loss, and his sister suffered convulsions. Deanes’ brother died of heart failure after years of health problems.

Their lawyer, Elkin Kistner, wants Congress to include people exposed to zinc cadmium sulfide spraying in St. Louis in a bill to pay victims of Cold War-era nuclear contamination from nuclear bomb production and atomic waste storage sites in and near St. Louis. But it’s unclear if lawmakers will expand that measure.

Deanes and Phillips said they also want an apology.

“This shouldn’t go on. How are we supposed to be the leader of the free world and this is the way we conduct ourselves with our own citizens?” Deanes said.