The Highwire with Del Bigtree - A CRITICAL MESSAGE FOR EAST PALESTINE

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

Hazardous material experts, Tammy Clark and Kristen Meghan Kelly, offer crucial professional advice to residents near the Ohio trainwreck for mitigating their exposure to toxic material in the air and water, and provide tips for documenting contact with hazardous levels of chemicals.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

So those people that, you know, are in Ohio right now, anywhere near this site, what would be your recommendation for them? The acute exposure has already happened. So I don't want to scare people, but that's like what's happened has already happened. So moving forward, if you are able, I would tell people this is ground zero. If you are at all able, I would completely relocate. Now, I know that that's not possible for some people. If you are not able to relocate, and that's just absolutely not a possibility for you, you need to begin proper cleanup, and that requires proper PPE.

So they need to be wearing gloves when they're touching surfaces. Beautil gloves. And let's remember, too, that the air that they're breathing is still contaminated. You know, people need to be decontaminating, and they still need to be sheltering in place by turning off their HVAC systems, and they need to be covering their vents when they're they're indoors, they need to try to seal. Like, this is what has irritated us and angered us from the beginning. People were not evacuated. Then they were told to shelter in place, but they weren't told how to shelter in place and what that means and what that looks like.

So covering vents, proper cleaning, proper contamination, using proper PPE, the butel gloves, and proper respirators and things like that. And now we've got a lot of contaminants on all surfaces in all homes because people were not told how to shelter in place properly. And all of that is inside of everybody's homes at this point. So babies crawling on the floors, I would absolutely not allow babies crawling on floors. I would absolutely make sure that you are, you know, proper vacuuming with a hepa vac. I was just going to say that. I mean, you're vacuuming. Most vacuums are just like atomizing this stuff back out of your carcass into the air. If you are in your home, please take out, be very careful, take out your HVAC filters. One, that could be highly flammable. So I don't know

what the weather is in Ohio, but if you turn your heat on, this is going to recirculate through your house. Put them in a trash bag. And when the time comes, if there is funds that are afforded or there's companies that offer discounts, you want to have these tested. The known chemicals are known so they can run panels, but they use GCMS. It's a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. They can tell you the level. So down the road, if this is like an Aaron Brockovich situation or there's litigation and settlements. This is your evidence, really. You're talking about you want backing up your evidence right now right right yes bag your hback filters because that is the only representative instantaneous data on exposure that we have and you need to get those filters out of

your home anyway because they're just recirculating the highest concentrations of contaminants that happened early on so i would i would also tell people in addition change those filters pretty much every day if you can for a little while there's a huge weather system that's going right through this area, folks, that weather is not going to help this issue. It can further leach these contaminants into the groundwater faster into the aquifers and all the navigable waters. Do not eat the snow and do not let your children play in the snow right now. The good thing about it is is what is in the air. It's going to be brought down to the ground, but now we're dealing with a possible down the road super fun site. So I just have to say that because somebody will try it.