Between the 1950s and 1970s, administrators at the prison in Philadelphia permit doctors from the University of Pennsylvania to use 100 incarcerated (predominantly) Black men for testing skin care products, "detergents, perfumes and anti-rash creams."

Some of the men are exposed to even harsher chemicals, such as "radioactive isotopes, LSD, chemical warfare agents and dioxins, a highly toxic group of chemical compounds often used to bleach paper pulp and manufacture pesticides" (Yang, 2022).