The early signs of liver cancer caused by vinyl chloride are hard to spot, leaving thousands of residents in Eastern Ohio vulnerable to long-term health problems following a train crash in East Palestine earlier this month This sprayed toxic chemicals into the air.
Patients and healthcare providers often have to navigate these disasters on an ad-hoc basis, given the difficulty of developing comprehensive disaster planning and response plans. Recovery and mitigation efforts often depend on litigation determining who will pay the bill. That means there are more questions than answers in the community.
A train of Norfolk Southern Corp. was derailed in East Palestine on February 3, spilling thousands of pounds of flammable material, including vinyl chloride, which the Environmental Protection Agency classifies as a carcinogen. Vinyl chloride from some carriages was intentionally released and ignited to avoid an uncontrolled explosion.
Juliane Beier, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies liver diseases, said that according to EPA estimates, it is unlikely that East Palestinian residents were exposed to high concentrations of vinyl chloride in the air. She said: “While low-level exposure to vinyl chloride is unlikely to cause cancer, it can accelerate disease progression if cancer cells are already present. Health care providers typically look for fat accumulation in liver cells and enzyme production during routine testing, and any abnormalities will often go unidentified, Beier said.
“Unfortunately, we won’t know the long-term health effects for a while because the problems caused by exposure to vinyl chloride are either silent in the early stages or take a while,” she said. take a long time to grow.
Officials should continue to monitor vinyl chloride levels in the air, water, homes and public buildings for at least a year, Beier added.
Residents of East Palestine demanded in two lawsuits seeking class action certification that Norfolk Southern pay for health screenings and medical monitoring as well as ongoing inspections of their homes and businesses. The plaintiffs, who filed the suit in Ohio federal court on Wednesday, also claim damages in property value and reduced revenue due to business interruption.
Following the Gulf Coast oil spill in 2010, BP agreed to pay those represented in class-action lawsuits for specific conditions that may result from oil exposure and activities. related cleanup.
Norfolk Southern said in a statement that it does not comment on pending litigation, but cited a letter to residents of East Palestine from Chief Executive Alan Shaw, who pledged to “stay here. for as long as necessary to keep you safe and help East Palestine recover and thrive.” Norfolk Southern said it has reimbursed residents for evacuation costs and established a $1 million fund, among other safety and recovery efforts.
Acute short-term health effects appear to be minimal, as hospitals in the area do not see many patients presenting to their emergency departments with respiratory problems. But the long-term effects are harder to measure.
A spokesperson for Salem (Ohio) Regional Medical Center said that as of Thursday, it had treated fewer than 10 patients who presented to the emergency department with respiratory symptoms. All have been discharged.
Heritage Valley Health System, which has a hospital in Beaver, Pennsylvania, declined to comment. Trinity Health based in Liviona, Michigan, which has a hospital in eastern Ohio, and Prime Healthcare Services based in Ontario, California, which has a hospital in East Liverpool, Ohio, did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for the nonprofit health system Bon Secours Mercy Health, which is based in Cincinnati, Ohio, said in a statement that it continues to monitor the situation and is in close contact with the Columbiana County Health District and Ohio Emergency Management Agency, along with other local agencies. , state and federal agencies.
Beier says consuming low amounts of vinyl chloride in water poses less of a threat than inhaling it, and the amounts EPA detects in water are also low. However, residents were still worried the contamination could spread to the land, the lawsuits allege.
On Wednesday, the EPA deemed water from East Palestine’s municipal water supply safe to drink after tests found no contaminants in raw water from five feeding wells. But officials warned that unregulated private wells could be contaminated and urged people to get tested.
The EPA has tested about 500 homes for vinyl chloride and hydrogen chloride, and as of Monday, there were no findings. However, those readings can fluctuate on a daily basis, says Beier.
“What if a house was one of the first to be monitored, but then one day vinyl chloride got into the groundwater?” she speaks.
