COLUMBUS, Ohio — Many are still concerned about the short-term and long-term effects of the East Palestine train derailment.
On Wednesday, Democratic state lawmakers gathered with representatives from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Ohio Environmental Council, American Cancer Society, Ohio Association of Professional Firefighters, along with a registered nurse.
The goal was to ask questions about what resources might be needed, how to ensure all of the proper testing is being done, and how to better plan for avoiding another similar disaster in the future.
“What we’re looking at is a town that is, and the citizens of this town, that are being hit with a big question mark, not only whether the water’s safe to drink, whether the air is safe to breathe, whether or not it’s really safe for them to return home just now because, while we’re getting reports that things are fine, do we really know that they are, do we really know what the long-term effect is going to be,” said Sen. Paula Hicks-Hudson, D-Toledo.
The state lawmakers said they plan to look to both potential legislative solutions but also ways they can advocate to both the governor and federal government. And they acknowledged it could be more challenging with the Republicans in the majority, but they pointed out that they don’t feel this is a political issue but is rather a human rights issue.
When it comes to the concerns about the chemicals released, 10TV went to an Ohio State University associate professor for some answers. Karen Dannemiller specializes in indoor environmental quality.
“A lot of the chemicals that were being transported are volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, and these are chemicals that tend to partition into the gas phase,” she said. “At room temperature, they like to be a gas rather than a liquid or a solid. So a lot of those, when they were released, would be initially released into the air and then dissipated, but some of them could have possibly been released into the soil or water, or they could continue to off gas, and so we’re really in the early phases of the environmental monitoring and assessment to determine what happened at this particular site.”
CBS News did a breakdown of the chemicals that were on board the train and their potential impact.
Five of the train cars were carrying vinyl chloride, a gas used to make plastic, which the Norfolk Southern Railway Company then released in a controlled burn on Feb. 6. There was particulate matter detected because of the fire, but the EPA reported that it did not detect chemical contaminants of concern in the hours following.
In a remedial action work plan that the Norfolk Southern Railway Company submitted to the EPA on Feb. 10, the company reported the train cars that derailed contained several other hazardous materials, including butyl acrylate, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate and isobutylene. Two cars also had benzene residue.
“There are often other ways that people are exposed to benzene,” Dannemiller said. “For example, if you have an attached garage, the gasoline in your car may actually release some benzene that could potentially get into your home as well. So it’s really just a question of the concentration in any particular area and if that concentration is at a level of concern.”
That’s why Dannemiller said it is important that the EPA be given adequate resources for testing and that extensive testing is done.
“A lot of these chemicals are fairly short-lived in the body, and so they don’t tend to persist, they don’t tend to persist in the food chain either like some other chemicals do,” Dannemiller said. “So the environmental assessment is probably the most important thing that the EPA can measure to also make sure that they can help prevent these exposures from occurring in the first place.”
Below is the latest update from the EPA on Monday:
On the evening of Feb. 14, U.S. EPA have completed 459 homes that have been screened with 28 scheduled for today. The total drinking water wells sampled to date is 21. EPA community air monitoring continues throughout the community.
Norfolk Southern is providing bottled water at their Family Assistance Center located at Abundant Life Church 46469 State Route 46, Waterford, OH. In Addition, Norfolk Southern is bringing in bottled water to East Palestine and the City of East Palestine will help distribute as needed.