That’s what made the disaster in Ohio so alarming. Five carriages burning vinyl chloride—some of which is intentionally done to relieve building pressure—has the potential to create toxic compounds known as dioxins. As the hot air from the fire rose, the fire from the train launched a column of black smoke into the air, capable of spreading the poison far away from the derailment site. “The problem with dioxins is that they are potent at very low levels, are persistent, and bioaccumulate,” says Schettler. This means they stay in the body instead of being broken down. “You don’t want dioxin deposited in the soil around East Palestine that won’t go away and will bioaccumulate in people who are exposed to it.”
The Environmental Protection Agency has considered the air in East Palestine to be safe. Officials also say the water is safe to drink. According to Gerald Markowitz, an occupational and environmental health historian at the City University of New York, much is still unknown about these individual chemicals and how they mix together and burn. “There is a real concern that there is no safe level of exposure to carcinogens,” says Markowitz.
Given that it’s so toxic, what did vinyl chloride do on trains? PVC is one of the most common plastics, most used in piping, packaging, and consumer products such as shower curtains. According to Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and a former EPA regional administrator, there are about 5,000 businesses in the United States alone that manufacture different types of plastic. And they all need ingredients. “There are not only trains, but also trucks that transport things,” says Enck.
And it’s not just vinyl chloride. Manufacturers must add a variety of other chemicals to give the plastic its plastic properties — such as those that make polymers more heat resistant or more flexible. Many of these are known endocrine disrupting chemicals, or EDC, makes our hormones go haywire. That’s why bisphenol A, aka BPA, was ruled out, after scientists linked it to cancer, behavioral conditions and diabetes.
But it’s a mole-smashing game. When a chemical is found to be dangerous, manufacturers replace it with other chemicals that can be equally, if not more, toxic. “There hasn’t been any research to see if they’re safe or if they’re less dangerous, but it’s still worrisome,” says Markowitz. It will probably be years before we know the potential side effects of alternative chemicals, he adds.
And BPA is just one among 2,400 other chemicals in plastic that scientists consider worrisome. one year 2021 learn found that exposure to plastic chemicals called phthalates may be responsible for 100,000 premature deaths in the US each year — and that’s a conservative estimate.
The core problem is that what is put into the plastic does not stay in the plastic. When a bag or bottle breaks, it releases its component chemicals in the form of leachate. Heat and freezing also fragment any plastic into microplastics, which are already damaged every corner of the environment, as well as our own bodies. They have been found in lung tissue, intestines, blood, and even the first faeces of babies. However, we know very little about the health consequences of microplastics, although early studies are finding that microplastics are highly toxic to human cells. in laboratory experiments. The fires in East Palestine are a particularly alarming example of a crisis that is getting worse by the day.
