It's now an empty field. It sits along West Jefferson on Detroit's south side. Sixty years ago, this area was bustling with activity.

A company called Revere Copper and Brass handled more than 1,000 tons of uranium. The heavy metal can cause health problems if inhaled as vapor or dust. High doses (?) can damage the kidneys.

While soldiers battled enemy forces around the globe in the second World War, top-secret projects involving radioactive materials were being conducted right here in metro Detroit. Five decades later, neighbors of these sites wonder if they're safe. Top-secret projects involving radioactive materials were being conducted right here in metro Detroit.

 Five decades later neighbors of these sites wonder if they're safe.

 Local 4 obtained classified documents just recently released from the Department of Energy. We've uncovered seven sites in the metro area, including three in Detroit and one each in Warren, Centerline, Farmington Hills and Ann Arbor. We've learned nuclear testing was done at these places during the War and post-War era.

 "It's interesting, but not surprising," Sarah Lile, the director of Detroit's Department of Environmental Affairs, said. "We were known as the arsenal of democracy."

 Lile has worked with government agencies to decontaminate and then demolish the plant that used to sit on West Jefferson. These documents reveal that we will never know just how much radioactive material passed through here in the 1950s.

 And here's another startling discovery. The presses and the furnace used here were stolen when the plant closed in the mid 1980's. And we've learned that equipment may have had radioactively contaminated dust.

 Carboloy Company was owned by General Electric in Warren during the 1950s. We've discovered that the company was involved in the testing of radioactive materials for two years, from 1956 to 1958.

 "They used uranium dioxide to see if they could develop fuels, nuclear fuels for rockets," Barry Moser, manager of Carboloy Facilities, said.

 Researchers worked to produce uranium metal slugs. They used the company's researchers worked to produce uranium metal slugs. They used the company's presses to turn the power into a solid to be used as fuel for nuclear rockets and weapons.

 "A lot of that stuff was probably pretty well classified," Moser said.

 Documents reveal that during the inuitial decontamination process in 1956 lathe coolant and sludge were dumped into a storm sewer and that some sludge was diluted with a solvent and water and spread over an unused field behind the plant.

 In 1995, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission came out to the site and performed extensive tests. A radiological survey was done and no contamination was found.

 In doing all the checking, they were unable to determine any possibilty of radioactivity existing now.

 In fact, the Department of Energy has signed off on all 7 sites where nuclear testing was done here in the metro area.

 On the government's once top-secret list:
 The former Wolverine Tube Division and The Detrex Corporation, both in Detroit; a University of Michigan site in Ann Arbor where research engineers worked with uranium and thorium and now owned by GM; the former United States Ordinance Plant in Centerline, believed to have assembled bomb components and weapons in connection with a top-secret Manhattan project to develop the atomic bomb, and in Farmington Hills. The Star Cutter Corporation which used to sit along Grand River Avenue tested 100 pieces of uranium material during one week in 1956.

 A new company now hangs it sign there.

 Jim Strauch lives next door to that plant. He says he is surprised to learn that while he was fighting over in the Pacific, testing was being done in what is now his backyard.

"I didn't know that. I imagine very few people knew that," Strauch said.