The silent environmental catastrophe in the USA's rust belt

After a train crash in Ohio, a gigantic mushroom cloud and large amounts of toxic gases were released. Dead fish are now swimming in the creeks, and residents are complaining of headaches and nausea

The evacuation of houses has been lifted, schools have reopened, and traffic is rolling on the railway line. From a distance, one could almost believe that normality was returning to the 4,700-inhabitant town of East Palestine between Pittsburgh and Cleveland on the eastern border of the state of Ohio two weeks after a catastrophic train accident - if it weren't for this lingering putrid smell in the air dead fish in the river and the headaches that many residents complain about.

"We basically destroyed an entire town to clear the railway line," Si Caggiano, the former fire chief of the town of Youngstown, 50 miles away, drastically describes the situation in an interview with a local radio station. "This is one of the deadliest environmental disasters in decades," Jamaal Bowman, a left-wing Democrat MP from New York, warns. Right-wing TV presenters like Dagen McDowell are already talking about "Chernobyl in Ohio".

Carcinogenic substances
The environmental drama in East Palestine has unfolded for over two weeks and has largely received little attention from US national media. In the beginning there was the routine run of the freight train 32N of the Norfolk Southern Railways, which, as is often the case in the USA, had a gigantic length with three locomotives and 150 wagons. Shortly before 9 p.m. on February 3, the mammoth vehicle derailed near East Palestine. 38 wagons went off track and exploded, and many more were badly damaged in the fire. At least a dozen of the overturned tank wagons were transporting dangerous goods, including vinyl chloride, a carcinogen that is also a narcotic and liver irritant.

In view of the extreme temperatures at the source of the fire, the authorities feared a gigantic detonation and therefore only decided three days after the accident to release the toxic chemical and burn it off in a controlled manner. Residents within a mile radius were evacuated. Video footage shows a monstrous mushroom of black smoke shooting up into the air and darkening the sky.

Environmentalists fear

The visible inferno could hardly have been the worst consequence. When vinyl chloride is burned, it releases hydrogen chloride and phosgene, which was used as a war gas in World War I. Environmentalists now fear the toxins are still in the air or have seeped into the soil and groundwater.

While the event receives significantly less attention in the national media than the presumably harmless unidentified flying objects in the sky, photos of dead dogs, foxes and chickens, presumably from East Palestine, are increasingly appearing on the online networks. Local authorities have determined that four 12-kilometer stretches of the Ohio River are contaminated and estimate that around 3,500 fish have died. Many people in the region complain of burning eyes, headaches, coughing and nausea.

rumors online
Nevertheless, according to official information, there is no acute danger for the residents. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found no air pollution above the limit values. So far, the samples of groundwater and drinking water have also been negative. Measurements in 396 houses revealed no exposure to vinyl chloride or hydrogen chloride. A lot of people aren't convinced. "Don't tell me everything's safe with dead fish floating around in the creek," Cathey Reese, who lives in neighboring Negley, told Pittsburgh local broadcaster WPXI.

Above all, the fear of long-term damage is great. So all sorts of rumors spread on the net. Some of the video clips posted there with gigantic clouds of smoke are demonstrably not from East Palestine. The Republicans also quickly discovered the topic for their propaganda. They see the incidents as further evidence that the Democrats don't care about the concerns of America's rust belt. "This is another failure under the responsibility of Mayor Pete," right-wing MP Andy Biggs attacked Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg in Washington.