Shortly after a Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, a team of investigators began touring the small town in a Nissan pickup.
It was February, less than three weeks after the disaster, and the van was equipped with an instrument called a mass spectrometer, which can measure hundreds to thousands of compounds in the air every second.
The team was looking for harmful levels of air pollution. At the time, a primary concern was a flammable substance called vinyl chloride, because Norfolk Southern intentionally burned the chemical in an attempt to prevent the possibility of an explosion. Some environmental health experts thought the chemical might have contributed to the rashes, vomiting, nose bleeds and bronchitis reported by some residents.
but a new study The team behind the research van, a group of scientists from Carnegie Mellon and Texas A&M universities, raises a flag about a different substance.
According to the study, levels of a chemical irritant called acrolein detected near the derailment site on February 20 and 21 were up to six times higher than normal levels recorded before the disaster. But local and federal officials had told residents it was safe to return home on February 8.
The test results were published earlier this year, but were first published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters. Long-term exposure to acrolein concentrations at detected levels may be a health concern, the researchers wrote.
Low levels of acrolein exposure are associated with slow breathing and burning in the nose and throat. Animal studies have found that long term exposure may result in damage to the lining of the lungs, abnormal injury, or nasal tumors.
«Acrolein was a bit of a surprise,» said Albert Presto, a research associate professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon, who conducted the research.
That’s because acrolein was not among the chemicals that were spilled or burned after the train skidded off the tracks. The researchers aren’t sure why it was present, though it could have been a byproduct or a mixture of other chemicals that were released.
Meanwhile, the vinyl chloride levels that were detected were below the Environmental Protection Agency’s long-term risk threshold.
Residents seek answers as to why they still feel sick
Ashley McCollum, who has lived in eastern Palestine for about seven years, said she is relieved that extensive air pollution tests have been carried out by independent researchers. But despite studies like this, McCollum said she’s still frustrated that many residents couldn’t get similar tests at home.
Residents still have questions about what is causing their lingering symptoms, McCollum said.
“It’s frustrating just because we have some symptoms that don’t align with the chemicals that are present,” he said.
McCollum said he still lives in a hotel in Columbiana, Ohio. When she visits her home about a block from the derailment site, she said, her eyes burn and her fingers and toes tingle, she develops a rash and feels «a little dizzy.» .
Presto said his team measured many other chemicals, but most «looked like typical ‘you’re in a city in the United States’ concentrations.»
However, the spectrometer detected chemicals that researchers were not looking for, such as elevated levels of formamide, which can cause eye and skin irritation, drowsiness and nausea, symptoms commonly reported by residents of East Palestine.
The EPA also detected acrolein in the air
The EPA found elevated levels of acrolein near the disaster site in February, but Presto said it did not look for the chemical at levels low enough to determine if it posed a long-term health risk.
«For some compounds, including acrolein, the concentrations that would have been potentially harmful to health were below what the EPA could measure,» he said. «We were more sensitive.»
Kellen Ashford, spokesman for EPA’s emergency response in eastern Palestine, said the agency «has deployed extensive resources to conduct stationary and mobile air monitoring» in the area.
«EPA cannot defend the interpretation of the data reported by Carnegie Mellon, but welcomes their scientific review and interpretation,» Ashford said.
Presto said it’s hard to link any chemical to people’s health problems because researchers haven’t measured all the compounds in air, water and soil, and it’s hard to isolate exposures to individual pollutants. Also, many of the chemicals that were detected are not fully understood in terms of their health effects, he added.
“If you live near where the train cars derailed, you weren’t just exposed to one thing at a time,” he said. “You were exposed to all this mix.”
Andrew Whelton, a professor of environmental and ecological engineering at Purdue University who was not involved in the new research, agreed that while the study provides important information about pollution in eastern Palestine, «it’s not the whole story.»
“His truck was left on the roads. They didn’t drive into Sulfur Run or into people’s homes where many of the exposures occurred and are still occurring to this day,” Whelton said, referring to a polluted creek that the EPA is working to remediate.
Whelton said that when he visited eastern Palestine in March, he detected multiple dangerous chemicals, including benzene and butyl acylate, in at least one building.
Last month he sent a letter to Senators Sherrod Brown and JD Vance and Rep. Bill Johnson of Ohio to share their observation that as of mid-June, several of the city’s buildings had «the distinctive odor of chemical contamination.»
«There are still acute health threats inside buildings that agencies have yet to eliminate,» Whelton wrote.