Today, Explained - Just how dangerous is the Ohio train crash?

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

The derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals has residents of East Palestine, Ohio fearing for their health and safety. Two weeks after the incident, many feel like they have more questions than answers. This episode was produced by Amanda Lewellyn and Avishay Artsy, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The only way I can describe it, it's like the doors of hell were open. I mean, it was hot and the flames were shooting up in the air at least 100 feet. Nobody seems to have any idea what's going on. They were all pointing the fingers at somebody else. It's pretty frustrating. What started as a train derailment in the village of East Palestine, Ohio, has escalated into suspicion that the water and air have been poisoned, calls for calm by authorities, the opening of a state-run health clinic, the announcement

of visits from Erin Brockovich and Donald Trump, all crescendoing yesterday in what looked a little like a game of chicken. Did someone want to drink the water? I would. As one resident offered the governor and the EPA administrator a drink from her tap. That's good. That's really cold coming from that. Coming up on Today Explained, just how dangerous is the situation in East Palestine?

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Abigail Botar is a reporter and producer at IdeaStream Public Media in Ohio. East Palestine, where this train derailed, is one of the areas that Abigail covers. And so she has been all over this story since early February. This was a 150-car train, and 20 cars, cars we know were carrying hazardous materials. So that was the Friday night, February 3rd. We were notified a short time ago that we've had a drastic change in the chemical inside the tank cars that we've been concerned about and watching all day, the vinyl chloride. We are at a risk now of a catastrophic failure of that container. That Sunday was when Ohio Governor Mike DeWine put out this evacuation order

saying that there was this risk of a catastrophic tanker failure that would lead to deadly shrapnel and this very big explosion. We need to get everybody who remained within that mile radius or decided they needed to come back within that mile radius. We need you to leave now. So people were ordered to leave the area, and there was a lot of confusion as to what was happening. Why was there going to be a tanker failure? What was on this train? That was a lot of unknown information there. On Monday, some things were clarified. DeWine held a press conference with a lot of officials on the scene. Vinyl chloride contents of five rail cars are

currently unstable and could potentially explode, causing deadly disbursement of shrapnel and toxic fumes. To alleviate the risk of this shrapnel, North and Southern Railroad is planning a controlled release of the vinyl chloride at approximately 3.30 p.m. So that was like a life or death situation, as the governor said. They had the Ohio National Guard on the scene. They were going door to door, making sure that people had evacuated the area. Those in the red area are facing grave danger of death if they are still in that area. Those living in the orange area are at risk of severe injury, severe injury including skin burns and serious lung damage. So they did the controlled release on Monday, February 6th

and it was a success but it caused caused this huge mushroom cloud of smoke. It was gigantic, and people could see it from miles away. I'm sure we've all seen those pictures before. It was really scary looking. I've seen all the smoke. The black smoke came out of East Palestine. You could stand at my house and see it. The bellow that come up, and it came down like a cloud, like a big black cloud,

right over the house. And it was everywhere. The evacuation order was lifted on February 8th, and shortly after that, the train company Norfolk Southern began running trains through the town right away. And the mayor, Trent Conaway, was really angry about that and released, had a press conference where he spoke very angrily about the train company doing that with no reassurance that a derailment would not happen again in their town. We need our town cleaned up. We need our residents to feel safe in their homes. That's the number one thing. Your home is your sanctuary. If you don't feel safe in your home, you're never going to feel safe anywhere. That was when the U.S. and Ohio EPA, who had been on the scene since the controlled

release or before the controlled release, they said the air and water monitoring was safe. And since the controlled release was safe, residents could come back home. Since residents have returned back home, they've been complaining of symptoms that they say are related to the chemical release. People are having headaches. We all have red rashes, loose stool, very congestion, eyes burning, everything smells. I have been having terrible headaches. I now have the chemical burns and reaction rash on my face and my throat is getting irritated again and feeling very uneasy, very uneasy. But despite all of this, the EPA, the U.S.

and the Ohio EPAs have been maintaining that the water and the air are safe, but that's just not matching up with what residents are experiencing. So there's like a lot of distrust in the government and these agencies that are on the scene from people. And there's like a lot of distrust in the government and these agencies that are on the scene from people, and there's like a lot of questions. They're not sure what the long-term health impact or the long-term environmental impact of this will be. We still want to raise chickens, so we don't know what's in the ground. We don't know what's in the air. They tell us it's all safe, but who knows? Would DeWine want his family to go live on the tracks where my family lives? Would he feel safe? No.

But instead of entering us into a state of emergency and calling in FEMA, this is what they want to do. They want to brush us under the rug like nothing ever happened, and that's what's being done. So people have questions that officials can't answer right now, and that's causing a lot of tension. And tell me about how some of that tension has played out. Right. So there was this public meeting Wednesday night that was supposed to be like kind of a town hall thing where officials from the EPA, officials from the health department, officials from Norfolk Southern, which is the company that owns the train that derailed, were supposed to be there to answer people's questions. But at some point in the day, Norfolk Southern pulled out of the event, citing threats of violence to their

employees, saying that they didn't feel safe attending this, which was kind of a controversial move that caused residents to be very upset because they said, we obviously don't want to hurt these people. We just want answers. Are we really safe? Is our water safe? You destroyed our town. Why? The governor and the mayor of East Palestine spoke out against our folks Southern saying that was the wrong decision, that they should have attended this event. They've been working with us tremendously, but they should because they're the ones who screwed this up. I'm going to hope that I gave the people what they wanted. So I hope everybody doesn't stand up and get a stump speech. I have all the experts behind me at these tables. And by God, we're going to get some answers for these people.

Why is the company not here? Because they're scared for their safety. And at this event, it was kind of a free for all. Hundreds of people came. We were packed into this gymnasium, this high school gymnasium in East Palestine. And people were just shouting questions at officials about the water quality, the air quality. If you're saying it's safe, then why does my child have rashes on his legs? Things like that.

So I don't think residents got a lot of answers to the questions that they had. Everybody that came here expects a hell of a lot more. And so this has caused kind of a bigger response. The governor requested help from the CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and that help is coming this week. They're setting up a clinic in town, Department of Health and Human Services, and the local, the Ohio Department of Public Health are setting up a clinic in town to kind of assess people's symptoms that they're having and answer questions. I think the hope is that that can kind of alleviate some of the stress and anxiety about the chemical

release. And also, Governor DeWine had previously said that he had talked to FEMA, and FEMA had said that East Palestine did not qualify for their aid. They did end up sending officials from FEMA on Saturday. So this past weekend, there have been FEMA officials on the ground aiding in the recovery and assistance in East Palestine. Abigail, what's the outcome that you've seen over the fact that there's not a united front, that there is a lot of confusion, and that there's even some blame here coming from the government to the company. What's the result when you talk to people on the ground of this? It varies, definitely, from person to person. I would say most of the people I spoke with were mad at Norfolk Southern and distrustful of the government, of the government agencies, of the EPA.

It's not that they don't think that they're monitoring the air. They just don't think that they're maybe monitoring for the right things, I would say. Because, I mean, if you put yourself in their shoes, you have all these officials saying that everything is okay, everything is safe. But then you're having these symptoms, and you're seeing the water and the dead fish and videos of water that looks like there's chemicals in it. And I think that just it causes this distrust because you're seeing with your own eyes and experiencing these things that you think were reasonably caused by these chemicals. But officials are saying everything is fine. I've certainly heard some conspiracy theories about what's happening. But then I would say most people are at at the very least, upset with Norfolk

Southern for loosening safety regulations. They think this never should have happened in the first place and that the company isn't doing enough to assure them that it won't happen again. Can you tell me a bit about what kind of conspiracy theorizing you're hearing? One of the big ones was that the CDC, I think a week or so before the derailment, had actually changed the severity of reaction to vinyl chloride. And vinyl chloride is that chemical that was on the train that was unstable that they did the controlled release of. thought it was a little too suspicious that right before this major train derailment with vinyl chloride on it, the CDC had changed the ranking of severity of vinyl chloride. So that's one of the things I've heard. I think it just goes back into like the politicalness of it. I think that the rest of the conspiracy theories go into that this is some sort of government cover up,

that the government is quieting people from cover-up, that the government is quieting people from talking about this, that the media is like in cahoots with the government to not cover this. But I would say locally, myself, the news team at IdeaStream, and all of the local papers and the TV stations here and in Pennsylvania, this is also impacting the Pennsylvania side of things, have been on the ground covering this tirelessly since the derailment happened at the beginning of the month. So I think it is a valid concern that residents have that they want more coverage, but I also, it is factually inaccurate because we are working very hard to cover this.

And then also, there have been a lot of critiques of capitalism that i've heard um i think people are angry they're questioning if the release of the vinyl chloride was actually the right decision or if it was the fastest way for norfolk southern to get freight back on that railroad track again and recoup the money that they lost so that I wouldn't say that's a conspiracy theory. I would say that's a distrust, again, in government decisions. But I think it's a valid question that people are now asking, that they're thinking, oh, was that actually the safest and best option? Or was that just a corporation doing what they could do to make more money? That was Abigail Botar of Ideastream Public Media, coming up an atmospheric chemist on what to do in the early stages of an environmental disaster. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket.

Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, R-A-M-P dot com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. I come at this from two perspectives.

One is trying to understand what we actually know. What is an actual problem with the science and with the chemicals that people are being exposed to? And the other aspect that I'm coming at this from is one of where are these chemicals going and what are the levels and are those levels dangerous? Delphine Farmer is a professor of chemistry at Colorado State University. She studies the air that we breathe and how it affects our health and the health of the environment. And in a situation like this, Delphine thinks in relative terms. Is this a catastrophe and is this a disaster for the people of East Palestine? Absolutely. This is

a really unfortunate situation. It should never have happened. But this isn't on the order of magnitude of Flint, Michigan or Chernobyl or one of these other terrible situations. People have certainly been exposed to chemicals. However, we don't know that those chemicals are dangerous at the levels that people were exposed to. But to the best of our knowledge, this is not an absolutely massive environmental disaster. This isn't the BP oil spill. This is an event that has impacted people, but it is not going to change the health of millions of Americans. What are the consequences to the environment that we know about in East Palestine at this point,

things we can be sure of? Yeah, so we know that chemicals were released into the air through a controlled release, the intentional burning of different sets of chemicals. We know that chemicals were released into the air by the initial accident and then through evaporation. We also know that some chemicals from this train spill were released into waterways. And that's really what we know for sure. We invited Delphine onto the show because first, she's not an alarmist by nature. And because we wanted her assessment of this situation and to ask what she would do if she were in East Palestine. So let's start with what was on that train.

So there were five train cars filled with vinyl chloride, which is the precursor chemical to make polyvinyl chloride or PVC, which you've seen in piping in your house. That was one big set of chemicals that people have been very concerned about. Then there's a whole other list of other train cars that has certain chemicals. So there was butyl acrylate, which is used in manufacturing and in paints. There were compounds like propylene glycol. So other solvents, compounds that are used in manufacturing of plastics. So there's this sort of long laundry list of chemicals. And I think that's the cause of some of the problems with this spill. And that's that we don't know how all of those chemicals interact with each other, especially when you burn them. So we know that vinyl chloride causes problems,

but we don't know how vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate might change human health effects when mixed together. With the unknowns that you just mentioned, why did officials decide to burn the chemicals off? There's a really good reason that the officials decided to burn the chemicals. Vinyl chloride is very explosive. It has a boiling point that's below the freezing point of water. So it very rapidly goes from a liquid form to a gas form. And if something very rapidly moves from liquid to gas, that makes it very explosive. So now if you put that liquid

in a large metal rail car, you suddenly have the potential for a bomb. And so there was a lot of concern that if these chemicals heated up and there was an unintentional release, then we would have a massive bomb with huge amounts of shrapnel. So that's the challenge here is that you start thinking about the health and safety of the first responders and of the community and that potential to have an incredibly large explosion that was completely uncontrolled. That was a big concern. And so that was the reason they pulled all the chemicals out of those train cars, diverted them into a trench, and then burned them.

And that was really to avoid a massive uncontrollable explosion of shrapnel. Okay, it makes sense why they were burned. And we all remember the pictures of like the big, billowing black smoke cloud over the town. Could burning the chemicals have made this situation more perilous for people's health? Well, so burning the chemicals definitely creates dangerous byproducts. And you can think about this just as though you take a piece of toast and you put it in your toaster and you leave it for just a little bit too long. Now you've generated a whole pile of new black char on your toast that wasn't there in the

first place. And you've also created smoke that is now setting your smoke alarm off in your house. And those are unintended byproducts. Those are things you didn't mean to make, but they're actually more toxic to you than the original piece of bread was. In exactly the same way, burning things generates combustion products, and those combustion products are problematic. Officials in East Palestine lifted evacuation orders after a couple of days. Why do you think they told people it was safe to go home? My suspicion is that the data that they had available to them told them that the levels in the air and in the water were low enough to not be of concern to the

people. The problem with that decision is that it was based on really poor data quality. My concern about the measurements that were taken is that the instruments, the detection devices, the little machines that they use to detect chemicals in the air, those are very, very low quality instruments. So those little machines are really designed for things like measuring chemical weapons in a battlefield or looking for leakage in an industrial environment. Those are not the types of instruments that we would want to use as environmental chemists to look at lower levels. And the other thing that it lacks is that it cannot measure what we call untargeted analysis.

These little sensors aren't going to be able to tell you if, for example, there are concentrations of dioxins in the air. And dioxins can be made in the combustion process or by reactions in the atmosphere. And those are a byproduct that environmental chemists are certainly concerned about here. And so those instruments can't measure things that they weren't specifically calibrated for. And so we're missing some pieces of information that I think environmental chemists are certainly concerned about. What kinds of longer-term implications might we see in East Palestine, both to people's health and to the environment? What will you be keeping an eye out for?

So given the current state of knowledge of what is in the air and what's in the water, it looks like the levels are below any acute problems. So that means these really rapid human health responses, things beyond just having a cough or a sore throat, but rapid onset of cancer. I am not concerned about that. My concern is over the unknowns. We don't know what exposure to lower levels of vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate below these critical thresholds. We don't know what exposure to lower levels of vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate below these critical thresholds. We don't really know what that's going to do for human health. But I know that's a very unsettling feeling for residents.

In terms of ecosystem impacts, there have been a lot of reports of dead fish. And that's that high concentration of butyl acrylate probably doing that. And that's concerning, but the water will dilute. So I'm really hoping that's just a short-term effect. The other issue to think about though, is that vinyl chloride oxidizes in the smoke plume and eventually ends up producing hydrochloric acid. And I'm not sure how much hydrochloric acid was produced in that smoke plume. So we don't know how acidic it was and if that's going to impact the ecosystems in the area. So we will see over time what happens to the air and to the plants and to the local community. But we just don't have enough information to really induce panic. If you could

tell people in East Palestine, listen, I'm an expert. I'm going to give you my best piece of advice. What's your best piece of advice? My best piece of advice is to clean your house. I would vacuum and dust all the surfaces that you can access in your house. I would then take a bucket with water and a commercial cleaning agent. You don't need anything fancy. And I would mop the floors of my house and get rid of that water. I would take a look at where my water came from. And if it comes

from a well, I would not touch it until it had been tested by a reputable agency. And I would also be really sensitive to anything that my body tells me because your nose is actually more sensitive than most of these instruments that these EPA contractors are using. And so if you smell a chlorine smell in your community or in your house, then that's an indicator that you do have a problem and that something got inside there and it hasn't come out. So then I would be considering leaving. And I would also be trusting that if I started feeling a cough or a sore throat that I wasn't sure where it was coming from, I might back away from that space and think about trying to get cleaner air. But I really think that cleaning the house

is actually an incredibly good way to get rid of some of those chemicals that have come into your house and sort of stuck to your floors and stuck to your walls. And so dust, mop, get rid of those and then air your house out. So let the windows be open and just move cleaner outdoor air through your house out. So let the windows be open and just move cleaner outdoor air through your house.

And that's going to really help reduce your exposure to anything that got inside. Delphine Farmer, she's an atmospheric chemist. Today's episode was produced by Amanda Llewellyn and Avishai Artsy. It was edited by Matthew Collette and fact-checked by Laura Bullard. And it was engineered by Paul Robert Mouncey. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.