That’s what makes the Ohio disaster so alarming. Five railway cars made of vinyl chloride were set on fire. Some were done intentionally to reduce pressure on the building. A toxic compound called dioxin may have been produced. As hot air from the fire rises, flames from the train can send black plumes into the air, spreading toxic material far beyond the derailment site. “The hallmark of dioxin is that it is potent, persistent, and bioaccumulative even at very low levels,” says Shetler. This means they stay in the body instead of breaking down. “Dioxin deposited in the soil around East Palestine is not going away and we don’t want it to bioaccumulate in the bodies of people exposed to it.”
The Environmental Protection Agency has determined that the air in Eastern Palestine is safe. Officials also say the water is safe to drink. But there are still many unknowns about these individual chemicals and how they mix and burn, according to Gerald Markowitz, an occupational and environmental health historian at the City University of New York. “There is a real concern that we don’t have safe levels of exposure to carcinogens,” says Markowitz.
Vinyl chloride is highly toxic, so what were you doing on the train? PVC is one of the most common types of plastic, especially used in plumbing, but also in consumer products such as packaging and shower curtains. In the United States alone, about 5,000 companies produce various types of plastic, says Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and former EPA Regional Administrator. And they all need ingredients. “It’s not just a train, it’s also a truck that carries things,” she says.
It’s not just vinyl chloride. Manufacturers have to add chunks of other chemicals to give the plastic the properties of plastic. For example, it increases the heat resistance and flexibility of polymers. Many of these are known endocrine disruptors (EDCs) and disrupt our hormones. That’s why bisphenol A, aka BPA, was chosen after scientists linked it to cancer, behavioral conditions, and diabetes.
But this is a game of whack-a-mole. If a chemical turns out to be dangerous, the manufacturer replaces it with another that may be just as, if not more, toxic. , or if it is less dangerous but still a concern,” says Markowitz. Deaf he added.
And BPA just one It’s one of 2,400 other chemicals in plastic that scientists think are of concern. A 2021 study found that exposure to plastic chemicals called phthalates may be responsible for 100,000 premature deaths in the United States each year.
The core problem is that what is put in plastic doesn’t stay in it.When a bag or bottle falls apart, it releases the chemicals in its ingredients as a leachate. Heat and freezing break down plastic into microplastics, spoiling not only every corner of our environment, but our own bodies as well. However, little is known about the health effects of microplastics, although early research suggests that microplastics are highly toxic to human cells in laboratory experiments. The fires in eastern Palestine are a particularly alarming example of a crisis that is getting worse by the day.
