"The Dorset Biological Warfare Experiments 1963-75
During the years 1949-1964 there was a growing realisation, confirmed by results from experiments conducted by Porton Down scientists, that a large area of the UK could be contaminated with simulated biological warfare agents by a single ship or aircraft. Experiments using the BW simulant, Zinc Cadmium sulphide, had shown that a spray aircraft, flying along the coast of the UK, could contaminate an area as large as 10,000 square miles from a distance of over 100 miles from the target area. This method of BW attack became known as the Large Area Coverage (LAC) concept.
During the early 1960s, scientists from the Microbiological Research Establishment Porton Down were tasked to investigate whether similar results could be obtained by using live bacteria instead of the chemical compound (ZnCds) that was used in previous experiments.
It was quickly realised that the Porton Range (area 7,000 acres) was far too small to be used in any of these proposed experiments. The Director of the MRE Porton Down, Dr D W Henderson, then suggested that spraying the bacteria at sea and detecting the resulting aerosol cloud inland might be a successful operational method, and so a search began for a suitable trials site in the UK.
According to declassified MRE Porton Down documents, South Dorset was eventually selected as the trials site because it met with three important, and still valid, requirements. (...)"
Bacillus globigii (BG): "In December 1997, John Chisholm, Chief Executive of the Defence Evaluation Research Agency (DERA, a part of the Ministry of Defence) admitted that 'BG may cause disease in immunocompromised people.'.
The strain of BG used in these experiments was obtained from the US Army Biological Warfare Laboratory at Fort Detrick. In May 1998, Dr John Reid, then Minister of State for the Armed Forces admitted that staff at Porton Down had been unable to find evidence of routine toxicity testing of the imported BG prior to its use in these experiments." http://www.nr23.net/govt/spray_dorset.htm
