Ohio EPA Soil and Water Data for East Palestine
Also, be careful of some of the information coming out.
This is part of an ongoing series detailing some of the information relating to the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment. The prior post can be found here.
First off, apologies for all of the East Palestine spam in the past week!
Right now I’m looking through several dozen articles to help form my hypothesis (which I should warn won’t be original, but will at least try to compile available information in a useful manner).
I’ve personally been frustrated that during one of the most critical toxicological issues of modern day that I haven’t really found much people searching for actual ecological/toxicological data.
Instead, it sometimes seems more like a partisan match of speculations that devolve into political finger pointing as people are focused more on blaming others rather than finding solutions to the current predicament.
Like I’ve said before, why has the focus shifted to railroad regulations when people are still unsure if the water they drink, the air they are breathing, and the soil their kids are playing in are actually safe?
The information I’ve provided have been things I’ve been able to scavenge from online. I’ll be honest and say that the sourcing of information has not been easy, so I can understand the frustration of East Palestine locals who are seeking answers but may have difficulty finding it online.
Because of this most of the information has been a “work in progress” as I try to collect what I can find online and provide updates.
Ohio EPA Soil and Water Data
To that, I have been able to find some data from Ohio’s EPA which measured soil and water samples for contamination.
This is in contrast to Norfolk Southern which hired out the private company Center for Toxicological and Environmental Health (CTEH) and collected samples for Norfolk Southern. It’s this company that likely had issues with the water sample collection noted in the previous post. It appears that CTEH sent the samples to Pace Analytical which was the lab that conducted the GC/MS analysis of the water for Norfolk Southern.
There doesn’t appear to be any lab associated with the Ohio EPA results, so it may have been done in-house. Here’s the analyses conducted by the Ohio EPA so far:
Both links provide an Excel spreadsheet of the analysis. As of now it’s been reported that the EPA will also now begin to conduct groundwater testing as well, which should have occurred concurrently with the above sampling to be honest.
I haven’t been able to spend time on this information, and given my inability to assess the results I’m remaining hesitant to draw any conclusions for now.
To those who care to look at the information the notations may be confusing, so here’s what some of them stand for:
DRO (Diesel Range Organics) C10-C28 refer to hydrocarbons derived from diesel with a carbon chain length in the range from 10-28 carbon atoms.
ORO (Oil Range Organics) C28-C40 refer to hydrocarbons in the range of 28-40 carbon atoms.
GRO (Gasoline Range Organics) C6-C10 refer to hydrocarbons from gasoline with a carbon chain length in the range of 6-10 carbon atoms.
All 3 groups fall under the general category of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (TPH) and are routinely quantified to check for environmental contaminants.
With that said, remember that results are only as good as the methods used during the analysis. Note that results may report that a sample did not fall within a detectable limit, in which case it does not mean that the sample is not there but just cannot be discernably detected given the methods used.
I’ll try to parse the data along with focusing on other work, so if I can come to something meaningful I will report on it.
Incident Report
On Friday it appears that the EPA released an Incident Report on the train derailment. It doesn’t appear to provide much information, but if people are interested they can take a look.
Soil and Water Waste deposited in Michigan and Texas
Over the weekend it’s been reported that waste from the train derailment were to be shipped to other states, with Texas and Michigan being the most notable. As reported by CNN nearly 2 million gallons of water used to put out the fire were to be transferred to Harris County, Texas to be disposed of with half a million already being moved there.
Belleville, Michigan were to receive over 20 truckloads of contaminated soil to be disposed of in a disposal plant, with fifteen being delivered and five being sent back to East Palestine.
In both instances, neither the state of Texas nor the state of Michigan were alerted that their states would serve as dumping grounds for the waste from the derailment, raising concerns by politicians about the unknown safety hazards with such a dump that left many in the dark.
Shipment of these materials were halted over the weekend with the EPA reviewing the disposal procedures of Norfolk Southern, and so far as of today the remaining waste is being moved to two EPA-certified facilities located in Ohio.
Be careful of some information
On reporting on the train derailment I’ve tried to remain cautious in how I report due to the events evolving every day.
However, in this time of social media plenty of people have come out making claims and inserting misinformation. Apparently Tik Tok has been inundated with stories that don’t appear to be truthful, and only serve to muddy the waters for people searching for information.
Right now many may be searching for detoxifying agents for things that are so far uncertain but also worrying, such as dioxin.
For instance, I’ve seen a few posts around which suggest that a compound found in sprouts and cruciferous vegetables called Indole-3-carbinol (I3C) would serve as a good detoxifying agent against dioxin.
Remember in my dioxin post that dioxin appears to exert its toxicity by binding to aryl hydrocarbon receptors (AHR) and increase expression of various cellular agents.
Research into aryl hydrocarbon research has suggested that these receptors do more than previously realized, making the activation/suppression of AHR a lot more nuanced than previously thought.
But in the case of I3C the effect here is actually not antagonistic to dioxin. Rather, I3C itself is an AHR agonist in the same ways that dioxin is.
In fact, an article from Oregon State University notes that the agonistic effects of 5,11-dihydroindolo-[3,2-b]carbazole (ICZ), a bioactive oligomer of I3C, has the same binding affinity as dioxin (emphasis mine):
I3C and some I3C condensation products can bind to a protein in the cytoplasm of cells called the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) (Figure 3) (11-13). In fact, ICZ is one of the most potent ligands for the AhR known with an affinity approaching that of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD). I3C acid condensation products, as well as indoles and their acid condensation products formed from tryptophan metabolism, appear to be important endogenous ligands for the AhR (13). Binding allows AhR to enter the nucleus where it forms a complex with the AhR nuclear translocator (Arnt) protein.
Again, many plant compounds serve as AHR agonists so this situation is far more complex than just taking a supplement to remove dioxin. Even if one were to do so, the lipophilicity of dioxin would allow it to be retained in the body for quite a long time (the lipophilic nature of some of these polyphenols also would raise questions about their longevity as well).
But this is just one example of widely circulating information that may not actually be true. I’m not sure where the idea for using I3C came from, but I’m curious if those who proposed it did not look more closely into the mechanisms of this compound.
Note that this isn’t intended to be medical information, but to remind people that they should be careful of accepting all information that they come across.
Toxicology Data and Education are needed
Over the weekend several federal agencies were reported to have been sent to East Palestine to help with the cleanup and informing the locals.
Environmentalist Erin Brockovich has also told locals to record their symptoms; something that should have occurred at the beginning of this disaster. Unfortunately, most doctors may not be equipped to properly assess chemical exposure, but given the current situation it would make sense to document as much as possible in order to provide individual profiles.
Many of these responses are coming 3 weeks too late, and at this point the lack of transparency and ongoing lack of information should raise serious concerns.
Given this degree of uncertainty, I’m rather shocked at how little is being done to actually educate the residents about the testing procedures being done, or why no community meeting has been conducted to go over the results of soil and water sample testing to educate people on how to parse the information and determine whether their environment is actually safe.
Not only should documentation be made, but residents should become informed about their current situation.
I’m not sure how much more I will be covering this week, but it may come every now and then in between my reading. Please let me know if you would like to see some more of these posts.
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Let me answer all your questions: Voters that matter live in cities and the suburbs thereof. Not in gutted towns like East Palestine.
Your posts are trustworthy and meaningful. I respect the caveats and cautious reporting in a chaotic info sphere. I cannot understand why Ohioians have not demanded better precautions for these folks -- shouldn’t they have been evacuated until the risk analysis is done?