Visiting East Palestine 1 year later

The federal agency has been overseeing Norfolk Southern’s testing and cleanup effort. So far, the EPA has collected more than 115 million air-monitoring data points; analyzed over 45,000 soil, water, and air samples; dug out more than 150,000 metric tons of contaminated soil; and shipped off 132 million L of tainted wastewater. But some scientists and residents worry that the federal agency may have downplayed health harms and risks, and they’re skeptical of its claims that the air, water, and soil posed no danger to the community.

Although Norfolk Southern and the EPA have done a lot of testing, the tests aren’t nuanced enough to address many contamination and exposure concerns, says Stephen Lester, a toxicologist and the science director of the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice, a Virginia-based environmental advocacy group. “Instead of acknowledging or recognizing that we just don’t know, they’ve created a narrative very early on that says, ‘Our testing shows everything is fine.’ ”

When I met Hylton in January, she took me to the East Palestine residence that her parents have owned since 1970 and where she’s lived her entire life. Although Hylton and her family members are now staying in a Norfolk Southern–provided rental house in Columbiana, Ohio—a town 16 km from East Palestine, she still stops by her home to pick up the mail every week or so.

As Hylton opens the door and we step in, a stale, musty odor hits us. The house has been mostly closed this past year, she says. The calendar hanging in her dining room still shows January 2023, the wooden floor clock in the living room is stuck at 12:45, and the Christmas tree that Hylton typically takes down on Feb. 27 every year still stands on the second floor.

The duplex sits atop Sulphur Run, a creek that snakes through town and was grossly contaminated after the derailment. Her basement has an open drainpipe that leads to the creek. When Hylton popped into her home after the evacuation order lifted, the house smelled like nail polish remover but sweet and somewhat metallic, she recalls.

“It was horrible,” she says. That stench lingered for nearly 2 months, and every time she was in the house—or even in town—her eyes burned, her lips and tongue tingled, and she felt fatigued and off-balance. The chemical smell has since disappeared, but Hylton still feels heaviness in her chest and sometimes burning in her eyes when she’s in the house.

After the derailment, many people living the area reported similar symptoms, as well as skin rashes, nosebleeds, nasal and throat irritation, coughing and asthma, nausea, and diarrhea.

“Those who live even 5 mi [8 km] and beyond also reported experiencing symptoms,” says Erin Haynes, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of Kentucky who’s been conducting health surveys in the area since April 2023. Some residents say they still feel sick and experience high levels of stress and trauma. Others feel fine. This divide has created tension between community members who still have concerns and want answers and accountability, and others who are ready to move on.

Train derailments are fairly common in the US, but they rarely result in big disasters. US Department of Transportation data show that on average, more than 1,000 trains derailed every year in the US in the past decade. Even so, the Federal Railroad Administration recognizes rail as the safest way to ship chemicals long distances overland. “Hazardous chemicals are actually safer on rail because there’s so much more potential for accidents on highways,” says Russell Glenz, a retired voluntary hazmat technician who worked with the emergency response team of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, for 30 years.

The train that derailed on Feb. 3 was heading from Madison, Illinois, to Conway, Pennsylvania. It was carrying vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, and isobutylene. These compounds are used to manufacture plastics, paints, glues, and cleaning products.

High temperatures can convert vinyl chloride to hydrogen chloride, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and traces of phosgene. Vinyl chloride is a known carcinogen. Its combustion by-products can irritate the skin, eyes, nose, throat, and lungs and cause fatigue and dizziness.

Inhaling butyl acrylate—which has a peculiar, pungent, fruity odor—can irritate the nose, throat, and lungs and cause headaches, dizziness, nausea, and vomiting. Direct contact can also burn and irritate the eyes and skin. Exposure to the other chemicals on board cause related symptoms, including abdominal pain, diarrhea, and other gastrointestinal issues.

“At the end of the day, the primary concern was vinyl chloride,” says Mark Durno, an emergency response coordinator for the EPA in East Palestine. The acrylates were also concerning because of short-term impacts, he adds, but they aren’t cancer-causing agents.

Benzene was another important consideration. Two empty train cars that derailed and caught fire had residues of the chemical from past shipments. Inhaling benzene can lead to nose and throat irritation and cause headaches, nausea, and vomiting. And it’s a carcinogen. Although it was present in only small amounts in the tanks, “we knew it needed to be monitored,” Durno says.

Four cars carrying PVC pellets also derailed and caught fire. Burning PVC can release dioxins, a group of toxic chemicals that persist in the environment and can cause cancer, interfere with hormones—resulting in reproductive problems—and damage the immune system. The EPA maintains that the air monitoring it conducted before, during, and after the fire indicated a low probability of dioxin formation from the derailment. But on March 2—after weeks of community pressure—the agency ordered Norfolk Southern to test local soils for these chemicals.

The company is also testing for semivolatile organic compounds (SVOCs) that could have formed during the burn and are associated with adverse health effects.

To remove highly pressurized gases in damaged train cars, authorities have a few options. They can pump the liquefied gas into tank trucks and haul them to a safe facility. If the car’s valves are damaged and the liquefied gas isn’t accessible, hot tapping is another option. This process entails drilling a hole into an undamaged section of the tank that’s in contact with the liquid, then attaching a new valve to transfer the contents to another tank.

In East Palestine, Norfolk Southern officials worried that vinyl chloride inside the railcars might be polymerizing because of heat from the fire. The polymerization reaction is exothermic: it releases heat that can raise the temperature and pressure inside the tanks. Officials feared that excessive heat and pressure buildup could cause the tanks to explode, sending toxic gas and shrapnel everywhere.

But during a June 22 NTSB hearing, William Carroll, a past president of the American Chemical Society, pointed out that heat alone couldn’t initiate polymerization. ACS publishes C&EN but is not involved in editorial decisions. Carroll is an organic chemist who worked at OxyChem—a manufacturer of vinyl chloride—for 37 years. He said that the polymerization process requires compounds called initiators to trigger the reaction.

Paul Thomas, vice president of health, environment, safety, and security at OxyVinyls, the OxyChem affiliate that manufactured the vinyl chloride on the Norfolk Southern train, also testified at the same hearing. He pointed out that the company stabilized the vinyl chloride for shipping by maintaining the concentration of oxygen, a potential initiator, below 200 ppm in the tanks. Polymerization couldn’t have occurred without an external initiator, Thomas said.

But on the ground, Norfolk Southern’s contractors suspected that the tanks’ pressure-release devices may have been damaged. The audible hiss that they heard from one railcar—indicating normal pressure release—disappeared on Feb. 5. It suggested to them that the pressure-release devices may have been plugged, which they attributed to vinyl chloride polymerization.

In the hearing, Norfolk Southern’s contractors also mentioned that the temperature of one railcar’s shell, which had been stable at 57.2 °C, increased to 58.8 °C within an hour on Feb. 5. These observations and the cars’ ongoing exposure to tremendous external heat from the fire led the team to conclude that polymerization may have begun and that venting and burning was the safest way to handle the vinyl chloride.

East Palestine’s fire chief, Keith Drabick, had 13 min to decide whether to approve this last-resort option. The process would entail cutting a hole at the top of the damaged car to vent vapors and release internal pressure, and a second hole at the bottom to drain the liquid into a pit, where it would be burned. Drabick authorized the operation at noon on Feb. 6, 1 day after residents living in a 1.6 by 3.2 km area surrounding East Palestine were evacuated.

Computer models determined the size of the evacuation area from weather conditions and vinyl chloride’s properties. The Ohio governor’s office warned residents of “grave danger of death” and “high risk of severe injury, including skin burns and serious lung damage” if they stayed. His statement also mentioned that it was unknown when residents could return.

People began scrambling. Some stayed with relatives or friends. Others sought hotel rooms, which were becoming increasingly hard to find. Hylton took her family to a hotel in Columbiana. Christa Graves, whose house is 2 km from the derailment site, wanted to move her family farther away and stayed in a hotel in Alliance, Ohio—a town about 50 km from East Palestine. But paying for two rooms was a sizable expense for the stay-at-home mom. “I wasn’t financially prepared for this,” she says. Courtney Miller, who lived about a kilometer from the derailment site, hopped between friends’ houses while the single mom’s two young kids stayed with their father in Shippingport, Pennsylvania—about 40 km from East Palestine.

As the evacuation continued, the EPA commenced testing for the vent and burn. Technicians monitored the air for hydrogen chloride and phosgene before, during, and after the controlled burn. They also tested the town’s municipal water source—five deep wells located about 2 km from the derailment site.

The tests did not detect phosgene or hydrogen chloride in the air, and the drinking water proved uncompromised. So local, state, and federal officials assured evacuated residents that it was safe to return home. They told households with private wells to consume bottled water until the wells were tested.

As families returned, sharp, unpleasant odors made people and their pets sick. The creeks running through East Palestine sported rainbow sheens and thousands of dead fish. Yet officials had given the green light to return, leaving residents baffled and distrustful of agencies in charge.

Starting Feb. 4, the EPA worked with Norfolk Southern’s contractor, CTEH, to monitor outdoor air for particulate matter and 79 chemicals, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as vinyl chloride. The agencies identified locations in the wreckage area and nearby residential neighborhoods to continuously measure air quality using portable photoionization detectors (PIDs) and stationary gas detectors. Between March and May, the federal agency also brought in a mobile van equipped with more-sophisticated air-monitoring instruments known as trace atmospheric gas analyzers (TAGAs) and proton-transfer-reaction mass spectrometers to measure VOCs and butyl acrylate generated by the cleanup process.

All monitoring results to date indicate to the EPA that the air is safe. “Ever since the evacuation was lifted, we’ve never seen any sustained levels of contaminants,” Durno says. “The size and scope of the outdoor testing shows us that there is no problem.”

And because the outdoor air has been OK, the agency believes that indoor spaces are unlikely to be contaminated. Last February, it oversaw CTEH’s visit to 631 homes and businesses to measure the vent and burn’s by-product, hydrogen chloride, and total VOCs, including many of the chemicals of concern on the train. Handheld PIDs identified VOCs in about 110 buildings, and the team noted the presence of a chemical odor in fewer than 20. “We never saw any vinyl chloride,” Durno says, and the EPA suggested ventilation to get rid of the smell.

Like other residents, Hylton was surprised when CTEH tested the air in her house and told her it was safe, while the overwhelming odor kept making her sick. Butyl acrylate has a low odor threshold, meaning that people can smell it even when it’s present at very low levels. But a document obtained by the energy and environmental news organization E&E News revealed that the PIDs may not have been sensitive enough to detect the chemicals at levels that elicit symptoms.

Federal and state officials learned on March 10 that the instruments’ minimum detection limit of 160 ppb for butyl acrylate well exceeded the 50 ppb limit for irritation effects. But according to Pennsylvania’s Departments of Health and of Environmental Protection, there are no established public health screening thresholds for intermediate or chronic exposure to butyl acrylate in a household setting. CTEH rejected the 50 ppb limit as irrelevant to health effects.

Andrew Whelton, an environmental engineer at Purdue University, argues that there’s another problem with PIDs. “The devices can sometimes be confounded by the complex air samples that they’re taking in, leading to erroneous results,” he says.

Meanwhile, Lester thinks that relying solely on single chemical analyses may be problematic. Tracking multiple chemicals at low levels, since that is typical of how people are exposed, may be relevant to understanding why people in this community have felt sick.

To address this gap, researchers are using silicone wristbands that absorb low levels of chemicals in a person’s environment. In July, Haynes and her team launched a study in which about 80 community members wore the bands for a week as they went about their daily chores. Her collaborators are now analyzing the bands for dangerous combustion compounds known as polycyclic aromatic carbons as well as acrylates and other compounds. In a separate project, Beatrice Golomb, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego, is using the silicone bands to find unknown chemicals that others may not be testing for.

Haynes worries that the teams may have missed a crucial window to do these tests, but Durno raises another challenge. He says it may be hard to distinguish low-level chemicals linked to the derailment from chemicals already in homes from cleaning products, paints, and glues. For that reason, the EPA has refused to conduct sophisticated indoor air-monitoring tests, despite demands for them from the community. But Thomas Pritchett, an analytical chemist who worked with the EPA’s Emergency Response Team between 1986 and 1995, argues that the agency has done such indoor air quality testing during past environmental disasters. His team, for example, used TAGAs to look for chemicals specific to the incident that weren’t normally found in homes. Butyl acrylate would’ve been a good candidate in the East Palestine case, Pritchett says.

Meanwhile, the two contaminated creeks are another concern for locals. In the summer and spring, kids play in Sulphur Run, which winds through town and joins Leslie Run, another creek. When the train derailed, butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate, benzene residues, and the lube oil swiftly made their way into the waters.

As the cleanup began last February, booms and underflow dams trapped contaminated water, and aerators placed in the creeks caused dissolved VOCs to escape into the air. These actions created a chemical exposure risk, Whelton says.

Since then, CTEH has been testing the creek’s surface waters and sediments for VOCs and SVOCs while monitoring the sheens along the creeks. “Keep Out—Testing & Cleaning In Progress” signs still line Sulphur and Leslie Runs.