Stephen Petty is a chemical engineer and certified industrial hygienist who has testified as a subject matter expert in hundreds of cases. He was initially hired by the plaintiff attorneys in the lawsuit against Norfolk Southern to do testing and conduct an environmental assessment in East Palestine, OH after the 2023 train derailment. However, his report was sealed by the court, and due to a non-disclosure agreement, he cannot reveal what was written in the document. In his whistleblower disclosure filed by Government Accountability Project, Petty states based on his expert research that it was premature for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to declare there would be no long-term health effects on the town following exposure to the toxic chemicals released by the vent-and-burn of the derailed train cars. Petty also stated that the key flaw in the soil sampling plan for the derailment was that the baseline samples were collected under the assumption the contaminant plume was to the southeast—even though wind-direction changed near the time of the open burn, shifting the deposition pattern. Several months after Petty disclosed his concerns about EPA’s sampling locations, Government Accountability Project uncovered EPA records that directly validated his assessment, showing that EPA secretly approved changes allowing key chemical compounds to be removed from the soil testing plan. Additionally, the records showed EPA instructed that “baseline” samples be taken...
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