East Palestine, Ohio: A town failed by the EPA
This op-ed was written by Government Accountability Project’s Legal Director, Tom Devine, and was originally published here.
A Norfolk Southern train derailed in the quiet town of East Palestine, Ohio, two years ago. After two years, you would think this story would be open and closed, that East Palestine would go back to being the small, working-class town it was. But you would be wrong. Its residents were betrayed by our government’s Environmental Protection Agency.
Ever since Feb. 3, 2023, residents of East Palestine have struggled with serious health conditions that were nonexistent before the derailment. When the EPA allowed the Norfolk Southern Railway to burn five cars filled with vinyl chloride and other toxic chemicals, more than 100 dangerous compounds including dioxins and phosgene were formed, blanketing the town and nearby Pennsylvania communities with a black cloud. Dioxin, the most dangerous forever chemical known to man, was the active ingredient in Agent Orange, a human rights atrocity in the Vietnam War.
Despite this hardship, residents banded together to make sense of why our government told them it was safe to return to homes that were not safe. Most of all, they wondered why the government and agencies that swore to protect them were keeping them in the dark while they scrambled to put their lives back together. However, with a new administration featuring Ohio’s former senator, Vice President J.D. Vance,...
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