Despite publicly reassuring the residents of East Palestine, Ohio, that they were safe following the 2023 derailment of a Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals, behind closed doors the Biden administration had concerns about potential cancer-causing toxins in the air. The new findings were revealed in emails which were first reported on by NewsNation.
Seven months after officials burned a handful of boxcars containing roughly 115,000 gallons of toxic vinyl chloride, former President Joe Biden sent Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Federal Disaster Recovery Coordinator Jim McPherson to East Palestine to document the town’s “unmet needs.”
What did the emails say?
Newly released files from FEMA, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), revealed communications between the disaster relief agency, the White House, the National Security Council and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which expressed concerns about airborne toxins remaining in the wake of the rail disaster. However, their public message still remained that there was no ongoing danger.
“The occurrence of a cancer cluster in EP [East Palestine] is not zero,” McPherson reportedly wrote in an email on March 24, 2024, to other administration officials.
“As you all are aware, the first 48 hours of the fire created a really toxic plume.”
The correspondence came a little more than a year after the derailment.
What are government watchdogs saying?
Lesley Pacey, who works with the Government Accountability Project, told NewsNation that these documents showed “FEMA knew health care was the No. 1 issue.”
“They also knew that they called this plume a really toxic plume. They knew that there would be the potential for cancer clusters.” Pacey said.
The Government Accountability Project previously sued to obtain the emails from FEMA after the agency initially refused to make them public.
“There’s White House officials and National Security Council officials discussing the danger of the cancer cluster potential and the health issues, and discussing whether or not to release the unmet needs report to the public and to the media,” Pacey added.
Pacey was also interviewed by The New York Post and stated that the Biden administration failed to conduct proper assessments of the extent of contamination from the spillage and burning of chemicals.
“They didn’t always test for the right chemicals. They didn’t test in the right locations. They didn’t have the right detection limits,” Pacey said.
She suggested that the White House wasn’t concerned “about public health” but rather “public reassurances.”
Testing issues
“They delayed testing for dioxin, and when they did the testing for dioxin – and also did the testing in people’s homes for other chemicals – they used Norfolk Southern contractors, and those contractors used equipment that wasn’t correct,” Pacey said.
Pacey, a senior environmental officer who conducted her own extensive investigation into the matter, said the Biden administration “completely botched this event from the very beginning.”
She also noted that planes meant to monitor air quality were not sent out due to bad weather until four days after the derailment when they should have been flown over the site within eight hours of the crash.
Pacey added that the Biden administration also failed to properly monitor the water supply in the wake of the derailment, and the decision to burn the boxcars resulted in East Palestine residents getting “very, very ill.” She said the emails also showed that officials were discussing the need for a “tripwire to identify cancer clusters.”
The emails allegedly showed that FEMA never released the “Unmet Needs Report” to the general public or media, and the Biden administration instructed McPherson not to meet with East Palestinians when they visited.
What was said publicly?
Despite concerns in private, Michael Regan, the EPA administrator under Biden, appeared with the media on Feb. 22, 2023, at a home in East Palestine, where cameras captured him drinking local tap water. Later, Regan announced that residents were “not in danger.”
Meanwhile, Biden criticized Norfolk Southern for the carelessness with which it carried toxic chemicals while commending the federal response to the incident.
Reactions from residents
Pacey said that McPherson was dubbed as “the ghost of October, because they were expecting him to be there in October but never could get a hold of him.”
East Palestine resident Christa Graves said her attempts to contact McPherson were essentially ignored, and reacted to the previously undisclosed emails with dismay.
“We’re supposed to believe that’s not how our country runs,” she said. “And I’m starting to see that’s how our country is always run.”
Trump administration’s response
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson responded to NewsNation’s report with a statement that read, in part, “Emails of FEMA ignoring a potential cancer cluster breakout in East Palestine, Ohio, under the Biden administration is yet another outrageous example of the gross mismanagement and poor treatment of Americans under the prior administration.
“This will never happen again under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Noem,” the spokesperson added.
Previous findings
As Straight Arrow News previously reported, the East Palestine train derailment and the decision to burn toxic railcars caused harmful chemicals to be released into the air and even spread to other states. Residents reported experiencing mysterious illnesses in the wake of the crash, and Norfolk Southern has paid out millions in settlements for the future health needs of residents.
