Seventy five years ago, on this day, September 26th, 1950,
On 26 and 27 September 1950, the U.S. Navy conducted a secret experiment named “Operation Sea-Spray” in which balloons filled with S. marcescens were released and burst over urban areas of the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Although the Navy later claimed the bacteria were harmless, beginning on September 29, 11 patients at a local hospital developed very rare, serious urinary tract infections. One of the afflicted patients, Edward J. Nevin, died.[27] Cases of pneumonia in San Francisco also increased after S. marcescens was released.[28][29] (That the simulant bacteria caused these infections and death has never been conclusively established.) Nevin’s son and grandson lost a lawsuit they brought against the government between 1981 and 1983, on the grounds that the government is immune,[30] and that the chance that the sprayed bacteria caused Nevin’s death was minute.[31]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 310ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was the “Cold War” and all the “national security” stuff was offering opportunities to conduct wild experiments with pretty much no oversight or risk of exposure. So scientists went wild.
What I think we can learn from this That when governments bang on about “national security”, watch out for your health. Or watch it decline because – absent an extremely vigorous civil society – you are gonna get used as some kind of guinea pig.
What happened next
Well, here’s this from wikipedia.
In the Senate subcommittee hearings in 1977, the Army revealed:
- Between 1949 and 1969, open-air tests of biological agents were conducted 239 times. In 80 of those experiments, the Army said it used live bacteria that its researchers at the time thought were harmless. In the others, it used inert chemicals to simulate bacteria.
- In the 1950s, army researchers dispersed Serratia on Panama City and Key West Florida with no known illnesses resulting.
- In the 1950s, army researchers dispersed zinc cadmium sulfide, a known cancer-causing agent, over Minnesota and other Midwestern states to see how far they would spread in the atmosphere. The particles were detected more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) away in New York state.
- Bacillus globigii, never shown to be harmful to people, was released in San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., and along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, among other places.
- In New York, military researchers in 1966 spread Bacillus subtilis variant Niger, also believed to be harmless, in the subway system by dropping lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto tracks in stations in midtown Manhattan. The bacteria were carried for miles throughout the subway system. Army officials concluded in a January 1968 report that: “Similar covert attacks with a pathogenic disease-causing agent during peak traffic periods could be expected to expose large numbers of people to infection and subsequent illness or death.”[17]
- In a May 1965 secret release of Bacillus globigii at Washington’s National Airport and its Greyhound Lines bus terminal, more than 130 passengers were exposed to the bacteria and traveled to 39 cities in seven states in the two weeks following the mock attack.[5]
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
September 26, 1969 – Death on All Fronts, says Allen Ginsberg – All Our Yesterdays
September 26, 1989 – Australian Union body tries to add green to red…
September 26, 1998 – Howard decision only to ratify Kyoto if US does leaks.