Interim update to East Palestine
A collection of several recent news reports and updates.
This was originally going to be part of a larger article, but I have taken to shortening it to just provide some updates for what I’ve seen going on in East Palestine. The prior post looked at dioxin levels, with a follow-up correction providing more context to the issue of dioxin.
The public discourse appears to have moved on past the incidents that have happened in East Palestine. At the same time, there are plenty of ongoing questions that have yet to be answered.
Here are some updates to what’s been going on:
Ongoing Cleanup
In mid-March it was reported that cleanup of East Palestine may take an additional 2-3 months. This includes removal of contaminated waste and water.
As of March 31 the following amount of contaminated waste and testing has been conducted, as reported in a weekly briefing from the EPA:
There have been several controversies surrounding the transparency of moving contaminated waste to other regions, with Baltimore being one of the most recent cities to deny contaminated water from East Palestine. This comes as the EPA suggested that blocking of contaminated waste was not allowed:
CDC team fell ill when visiting cleanup site
The CDC is looking into several US investigators who fell ill when visiting East Palestine in early March. The reports note symptoms typical of those that have been reported of residents, which appeared to have resolved after they left the area.
The following comes from an article from CBS News Pittsburgh:
(CNN/KDKA) -- Seven U.S. government investigators briefly fell ill in early March while studying the possible health impacts of a toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The investigators' symptoms included sore throats, headaches, coughing and nausea -- consistent with what some residents in Ohio and across the border in Pennsylvania experienced after the Feb. 3 train derailment that released a cocktail of hazardous chemicals into the air, water and soil.
The investigators who experienced symptoms were part of a team conducting a house-to-house survey in an area near the derailment, and they immediately reported their symptoms to federal safety officers.
In examining symptoms there have been several questions as to whether the symptoms of East Palestine residents may be due to other circumstances or even something psychosomatic.
Given that the symptoms of these investigators appeared around the same time as each other, and after visiting the area, it adds credence to the idea that chemicals in the area may be causing these persistent symptoms.
Of course, there is the possibility of these symptoms still being psychosomatic and akin to a social contagion, but there also wouldn’t be incentives for government agents to report symptoms (likely the contrary).
Interestingly, the article notes that these symptoms were not reported to the public since they cleared up after leaving the area. The whistleblower would need to be corroborated, but this evidence adds more confirmation of something causing the symptoms in East Palestine, and real concerns that some of these symptoms may be downplayed.
A partial timeline of symptoms
Different chemicals are going to lead to different symptoms, with some causing acute toxicity while others may take months or years to develop.
Hence, a timeline of symptoms is important, as it provides insights into some of the chemicals that people may have been exposed to.
For instance, an article from mid-February reported in The Independent provided information about a family who noticed a chemical, bleach-like smell in the air, which may suggest exposure to hydrogen chloride, although they don’t provide information about when these symptoms appeared with respect to the controlled fire.
The article notes that the symptoms appeared after the train derailed, and the quote provided mentions “when we left town” which may have occurred on February 5th given the evacuation date, although this raises questions about what the exposure would have been from given that the controlled fire did not occur yet.
Recently an East Palestine resident named Greg Mascher provided a first-hand account of symptoms and a timeline of events in The Guardian, which also strangely suggest that the symptoms appeared prior to the controlled fire [dates added]:
We initially thought that a coal train had caught fire. We learned later that 38 cars of industrial supplies, including at least 11 cars of toxic chemicals, had derailed. Another 12 cars were damaged by fire. The train’s spilled cargo included vinyl chloride, a chemical that causes liver cancer.
People in the immediate area of the derailment were ordered to evacuate, in case of an explosion. The rest of us were told to shelter in place. By Saturday [February 4th], the next morning, the air was full of smog. I was supposed to take my girls to a school basketball game; I told them to pull their hoodies up over their mouths.
On Sunday [February 5th], the EPA officials said that they did not detect any contaminants in the air. But my granddaughters had developed blotches all over their bodies. They looked like burns, as if they’d spent too much time next to a sun lamp. My seven-year-old granddaughter’s leg was beet-red. They were coughing and their eyes were burning. I began to experience constant headaches and a nagging cough.
Mascher lived outside of the evacuation zone, and remember that the controlled fire took place on Monday, February 6th, so this raises questions about the smog that Mascher and his family was exposed to.
In an EPA document the tanks carrying vinyl chloride didn’t appear ruptured at the time of the controlled fire. However, other tanks appeared to have been at various stages of emptying/leakage:
Ethylhexyl acrylate: ruptured and level within tank was unknown at the time of reporting
Diethylene glycol: small leak occurred with unknown level left in one tank; another tank breached/load lost
Butyl acrylates: entire tank emptied via spill and fire
I didn’t realize this when originally reporting on these tanks, but the fire in association with the butyl acrylates suggests that combustion products may have been released prior to the controlled fire and may be responsible for some of these symptoms.
For instance, a 1988 review1 on acrylic pyrolysis (heating outside of the presence of oxygen) and combustion (heat in the presence of oxygen) noted that various acrylics may produce acrolein, although the review noted that this appears to occur with methacrylates rather than acrylates.
If acrolein sounds familiar, an independent group from Texas A&M noted elevated levels of acrolein in East Palestine relative to other cities, and was reported in a separate post:
The same team (Texas A&M in partnership with Carnegie Mellon) was reported to have found elevated levels of 4 acrolein-like compounds in the area in an updated article posted in Scientific America.
They also appeared to have corroborated the EPA’s findings on the air quality for certain compounds.
Keep in mind that the values here are relative; levels in East Palestine may be more elevated relative to other areas given that East Palestine is an industrial region. Unless data is compared to background levels a lot of speculation is warranted toward these interpretations.
In contrast, acrolein is highly volatile and levels may likely fluctuate due to exposure to even heat/sunlight. Therefore, levels at the time of measure may be far low than levels of exposure due to the volatility of acrolein.
Nonetheless, these anecdotes and evidence have made me curious if combusted compounds may have been released before the controlled fire, and may be responsible for some of the symptoms that were present before the controlled fire even began, as in the case of Mascher’s family.
The EPA notes that acrolein gives off a burned, sweet, pungent odor at 0.25 ppm and acts as a respiratory irritant from acute and chronic exposure. Evidence suggests that acrolein may also serve as a skin irritant and may explain some of the rashes, although the circumstances may point to other factors as well.
Overall, all of this is a supposition; lack of clear timelines tracing symptom onset to exposure means that a lot of the compounds found from combustion may be red herrings.
Presence of X is not indicative of exposure to X, and is another consequence of the bystander fallacy. It’s the same issue reported previously where erythritol in blood was argued to correlate with increased risk of strokes and heart attacks, when in reality the presence of this compound is likely to be a marker of cardiometabolic issues that are already present. The same can be said for the presence of amyloid plaques, which may not actually be the cause of Alzheimer’s dementia but may be a sign of cellular dysfunction in handling misfolded proteins.
Unless a clear timeline can be construction, in which a series of events and symptom onset can be tied together, the ongoing issue in East Palestine is likely to remain a mystery. This comes with the lack of actual toxicology reports which would provide greater information on chemical exposure to locals.
More data, and more samples will always provide better evidence towards safety.
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Johnston PK, Doyle E, Orzel RA. Acrylics: A Literature Review of Thermal Decomposition Products and Toxicity. Journal of the American College of Toxicology. 1988;7(2):139-200. doi:10.3109/10915818809014519