Time Magazine has an amazing retrospective of that last year in East Palestine, Ohio. Reporter Alejandro De La Garza provides an excellent summary of the environmental challenges, public skepticism towards the government, the railroad company’s cleanup efforts, and the health problems faced by the community.
It’s that last item, the health concerns, that is a major problem. It seems that whenever residents complain about the range of new issues they are facing, they are told, “Sorry, but we can’t connect this to the derailment.” Those nine words often mean not just a medical mystery ailment but also no financial help. In one case, a resident developed headaches, vomiting, and persistent fatigue after returning home. He was told that none of it could be linked to the derailment, and months later diagnosed with rapid-onset congestive heart failure. Another resident was rushed to the hospital after experiencing sharp pains in his lungs and breathing issues while walking past Sulpher Creek, which runs through the derailment site. Doctors told him they couldn’t confirm it was related to the derailment, then said to take two Tylenol and come back if it got worse.
Last month the NTSB report came out. The big bombshell: there was no need for Norfolk Southern to burn off the chemicals in the derailment. OxyVinyl, the company that made the stuff, said there was no indication that an explosion was imminent, the excuse used to do the burn. Turns out, that information, which was given to Norfolk Southern at the time, was never relayed to any of the other officials on the ground.
While the people of East Palestine struggle with a medical community that has no answers and what seems like never-ending government incompetence, imagine how frustrating it must feel to wake up to a report from the Government Accountability Project that says the EPA had the authority to declare the derailment site a public health emergency, giving everyone in town access to life-long health care, and instead decided that it was, “Best not to get into this.”
The EPA tried to get ahead of this by saying that they did not want to declare the area a health risk because “widespread health problems and ongoing chemical exposures haven’t been documented.” However, according to reporting by News Nation Now, “no government agency, including the EPA and CDC, has tested residents’ health.”
Even though the same EPA warned that Phosgene – a World War 1 era chemical weapon – would potentially be created by burning off the vinyl chloride, they decided it was “Best not to get into this.”
Lorraine Yuriar is a wife, mother, and lifelong conservative, currently stuck in a very blue state.
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Author: Lorraine Yuriar
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