(NewsNation) — More than three years after the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, a member of the field response team is coming forward with allegations of contamination data being buried. Testers were told they’d better come back with good results, and residents were falsely assured the air was safe, according to a sworn affidavit obtained by NewsNation.
Peggy Dixon is a former environmental tester turned whistleblower with the Government Accountability Project. She worked on the cleanup of the 2023 East Palestine, Ohio, train wreck. Twenty of the affected train cars contained materials the Environmental Protection Agency deemed hazardous, including vinyl chloride, ethylene glycol, ethylhexyl acrylate, butyl acrylate and isobutylene.
Now, in the affidavit, Dixon says the company that hired her, Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health (now known as Onterris), working for the company that operated the freight train that derailed, helped to hide how bad the contamination really was.
“That was a turning point for me. I realized this wasn’t about public safety — it was about liability,” Dixon said. She was part of the response teams in the weeks after the derailment, in the excavation work in 2024 and last year’s work to close the site.
According to the affidavit, Dixon said project managers emphasized to field staff they needed “zeroes” — results indicating things were safe — or they would be presumed incompetent and sent home.
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