Ohio officials: Chemicals from derailed train seem low risk

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Airquality testing indicates that the chemicals spilled and burned from a train that derailed near East Palestine, Ohio last week don’t pose a major health hazard, Gov. Mike DeWine and state officials said on Tuesday.

However, Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, the director of the Ohio Department of Health, recommended that people around the area near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border should use bottled water while municipal water sources are tested. Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Director Anne Vogel also said that a “plume” of chemicals from the initial release is headed down the Ohio River, though she said drinking water treatment processes should remove any contaminants.

The Norfolk Southern train derailed on Feb. 3, spilling toxic chemicals such as vinyl chloride, Butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate, and ethylene glycol monobutyl either. Federal and state officials, fearing the vinyl chloride tanks would explode, set them afire, creating a massive plume of thick black smoke. Other chemicals got into local streams, killing fish and traveling down into the Ohio River.

But DeWine said Tuesday that under federal law the railroad operator wasn’t required to alert state officials about what they were carrying and called on Congress to make changes.

After the derailment, DeWine ordered a mandatory evacuation within a one-mile radius of the train, though residents were allowed to return last Wednesday. In the days following the derailment, both inside and outside the evacuation zone, some residents reported suffering symptoms such as headaches and sore throats, and others said chickens and other animals died.

However, Vanderhoff said testing conducted in the area has shown that air quality has returned to levels seen before the derailment. Water testing has shown a couple of the chemicals remain in some streams, though there doesn’t appear to be any increase in fish or aquatic creatures killed since the first couple days, according to Ohio Department of Natural Resources Director Mary Mertz.

The chemicals spilled from the train are all volatile organic compounds, which humans are exposed to in small doses to when they pump gas or smoke a cigarette, Vanderhoff said. It’s only when people are exposed to high doses of such compounds over an extended period of time that they suffer health problems, he said.