All opinions expressed in this article are solely the opinions of the contributors.
Five of the 38 train cars that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio were carrying large amounts of the carcinogenic gas vinyl chloride, according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary investigation. Exposure to high levels of vinyl chloride can increase the risk of cancer, and many residents in the area have been reporting cases of dizziness, rashes, headaches, and even chemical bronchitis. Meanwhile, environmental officials say they’ve conducted tests on air and water samples and, so far at least, they see no signs of risk to local residents.
Straight Arrow News contributor David Pakman takes a look at some historical examples of authorities being less than transparent about the dangers of toxic chemicals and wonders if that same problem is recurring in Ohio.
The Love Canal is a neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York, and a lot of homes there were built on top of a toxic waste dump. And the chemicals in the dump were linked to health problems in the community. This included higher rates of cancer and higher rates of birth defects. The governments involved initially downplayed those risks and took years to evacuate residents even though it should have been done right away.
More recently: the Flint water crisis. This started, I believe it was in 2014 in Flint, Michigan, and the idea was — change the drinking water source to the Flint River. It’s going to be cheaper, it’s going to be more efficient, whatever. And it turned out that it was extraordinarily corrosive. There was lead leaching from the pipes into the water supply. And to a criminal degree — people have been indicted for this — to a criminal degree, the risks were downplayed and Flint is still on bottled drinking water. And we are almost a decade in. That’s not some example from forty, fifty years ago. That’s an example from right now.
You’ve got Three Mile Island, Agent Orange and all sorts of different deception and ignorance about the truly damaging nature of these chemicals.
