--:-- Noelle King: The only way I can describe it is 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.
--:-- [Discussion continues]
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- [Discussion continues]
--:-- Noelle King: 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. It's really cold coming from the tap.
--:-- [Discussion continues]
--:-- Noelle King: Coming up on Today Explained, just how dangerous is the situation in East Palestine? Support for this show comes from ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into, don't you know? That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 use the ServiceNow AI platform.
--:-- [Discussion continues]
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: This was a 150 car train and 20 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: The 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 Southern Railroad is planning a controlled release of the vinyl chloride at approximately 3.30 p.m.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: So they did the controlled release on Monday, February 6th, and it was a success, but it 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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. where if you don't feel safe in your home, you're never going to feel safe anywhere.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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 questions. They're not sure what the long-term health impact or the long-term environmental impact of this will be.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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 what being done
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: We're 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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 Norfolk Southern, saying that was the wrong decision, that they should have attended this event.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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 they got, residents got a lot of answers to the questions that they had.
--:-- Abigail Botar: Everybody that came here expects a hell of a war. 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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 Botar: — 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?
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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 the very least upset with Norfolk Southern for loosening safety regulations.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: Can you tell me a bit about what kind of conspiracy theorizing you're hearing?
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: So when people caught wind of that, they 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: So that's one of the things I've heard. I think it just goes back into 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 talking about this, that the media is like in cahoots with the government to not cover this.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: So I think it is a valid concern that residents have that they want more coverage. But I also it is it is factually inaccurate because we are working very hard to cover this.
--:-- Abigail Botar: And then also, there have been a lot of critiques of capitalism that I've heard. 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.
--:-- Abigail Botar: 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?
--:-- Noelle King: Abigail Botar of Ideastream Public Media is here to help us understand what's happening in East Palestine. Thank you, Abigail.
--:-- Noelle King: Coming up, an atmospheric chemist on what to do in the early stages of an environmental disaster. Support for today show comes from Adio What is Adio? Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: What are the consequences to the environment that we know about in East Palestine at this point? Things we can be sure of.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: Yeah, so we know that chemicals were released into the air through a controlled release, the intentional burning of different sets of chemicals.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: With the unknowns that you just mentioned, why did officials decide to burn the chemicals off?
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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 freezing point of water.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: And that was really to avoid a massive, uncontrollable explosion of shrapnel.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: Could burning the chemicals have made this situation more perilous for people's health?
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: In exactly the same way burning things generates combustion products and those combustion products are problematic
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: So those little machines are really designed for things like measuring chemical weapons in a battlefield or looking for leakage in an industrial environment.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: And so we're missing some pieces of information that I think environmental chemists are certainly concerned about.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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?
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: And that's concerning, but the water will dilute. So I'm really hoping that's just a short-term effect.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: The other issue to think about, is that vinyl chloride oxidizes in the smoke plume and eventually ends up producing hydrochloric acid.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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?
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: 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.
--:-- Delphine Farmer: And that's going to really help reduce your exposure to anything that got inside.
--:-- Noelle King: Delphine Farmer, an atmospheric chemist, is here to help us understand what's happening in East Palestine. Thank you, Delphine.
--:-- Noelle King: Today's episode was produced by Amanda Llewellyn and Avishai Artsy. It was edited by Matthew Collette and fact-checked by Laura Bullard.
--:-- Noelle King: And it was engineered by Paul Robert Mouncey. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.
