Chemicals released during the East Palestine train wreck fires in February 2023 in Ohio were carried across 16 US states, new research of federal precipitation and pollution data shows.
Analysis of rain and snow samples collected from northern Wisconsin to Maine and North Carolina in the weeks following the crash found the highest levels of pH and some compounds recorded over the last 10 years. That includes chloride, which researchers say was largely released during a controversial controlled burn of highly toxic vinyl chloride carried by the train.
Researchers expected to find some evidence of the burn 50 miles from the site, and the high levels of contamination in the samples across the vast range that it was spread was “very surprising”, said David Gay, a University of Wisconsin researcher and lead author.
“We saw the chemical signal from this fire at a lot of sites and far away,” he added. “There was more than we ever would have guessed.”
Dozens of cars on the Norfolk Southern train derailed and burned in the town of 4,700 at the edge of the Appalachian hills. The fire burned near tankers carrying vinyl chloride, and, two days later, fearing a “major explosion”, officials conducted a controlled burn of of the chemical as a prevention measure.
In the immediate vicinity and in pockets throughout the city, a potent chemical odor hung in the air for weeks. The pollution also spread far and wide because the wreck’s fires burned for so long, and the controlled vinyl chloride burn was extremely hot and concentrated, Gay said. It sent a towering plume into the Earth’s free troposphere, where winds often blow between 50 and 100mph.
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