Images of dead fish floating in murky waters and ominous clouds of gray smoke littered the front pages across the country. On our TV screens, interviews with desperate residents alternate with excited talkers. A month after the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, America continues to bear witness to the suffering of the community.
While any train fire accident is dangerous, this one was particularly disastrous given the chemicals on board. Chief among these was the carcinogenic vinyl chloride gas, which agents deliberately released into the surrounding air to prevent an explosion. Residents were evacuated during this operation, but concerns about long-term contamination and exposure remain. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered railroads to test the air for dioxins, which also cause cancer and can linger in the environment long after vinyl chloride and other plastic chemicals have burned.
Soon the camera crews pack up and the audience’s attention turns to the next big story. But for eastern Palestine, the story is just beginning, and the next chapters are likely to be grim. We know this because the same chemical contaminated—and eventually destroyed—several Louisiana towns decades ago.
Morrisonville, LA. was founded by freedmen after the Civil War and grew into a vibrant, predominantly African-American community. But in 1958, chemical giant Dow built a vinyl chloride plant near the river, crowding out the city’s sugar and cotton plantations. The demand for PVC plastic – the main product made from vinyl chloride – grew and the factory expanded further into the community. As one local resident put it in the Times-Picayune at the time, the facility was “right above us.” The current sirens warning of the release of toxic substances soon became part of everyday life. During these events, residents were urged to close windows and doors and stay indoors to avoid breathing in too much of the toxic fumes.
As environmental groups and the EPA noted increasing disease and fish kills in the 1980s, Dow made modest offers to buy residents out of their homes, often barely enough to buy or rent a new home. When the residents refused, they were put under pressure. If they didn’t take the offer, the company suggested, their property would quickly become worthless due to pollution. In the early 1990s, the city was completely deserted except for a cemetery.
Reveilletown, LA. was another bustling community built by formerly enslaved people and destroyed by the PVC plastic industry. A major producer, Georgia Gulf, eventually overtook the city and spewed vinyl chloride and its by-products into the air and water. The venture devastated the community and widely scattered the residents—severing their community ties, their denominational ties, and any political affiliation they might otherwise have had. City residents staged a candlelight vigil in 1989 where, according to former resident Janice Dickerson, “black and white environmentalists mourned the death of the community.”
A similar fate befell Mossville, La. Producers of vinyl chloride polluted the city and began buying up residents a decade ago when the toxic effects began to be felt.
The production of vinyl chloride not only destroyed these cities, but also caused the surrounding region to become known as ‘Cancer Alley’. The water, air and soil in this area have become the wastewater of the American plastics and chemical industries. According to a 2014 EPA analysis, seven of the 10 U.S. census areas with the highest cancer risk from airborne pollutants are in this area. The same analysis found that city dwellers are 50 times more likely than the average American to get cancer from air pollution.
The release of vinyl chloride in eastern Palestine came from a train carrying the chemical, not a factory smokestack. As a result, most public inquiries have focused on the Norfolk Southern Railway Corporation and the transport authorities, rather than the chemical industry. (A second Norfolk-Southern train derailed in Ohio on Saturday, though officials say no hazardous materials were involved in the accident.) Improved safety in rail and chemical transportation is undeniably essential to avoiding such disasters in the future.
However, it is also important to look at the bigger picture. The East Palestinian Train carried this dangerous chemical primarily because of a thriving plastics industry that expanded into Ohio and other parts of the Appalachian Mountains. What happened in Louisiana will happen elsewhere unless action is taken quickly.
PVC is ubiquitous and used in products such as toys and pipes. But it is also very interchangeable. Materials experts say alternatives such as glass, ceramic, linoleum and polyester are viable substitutes in most cases. For this reason, it would be a wise move by the government to restrict all non-essential uses of PVC and pave the way for a phase-out of vinyl chloride production.
PVC is already banned in most food packaging in Canada and South Korea, and legislation is being drafted in California to ban it. However, wider action is needed on PVC – and in relation to the wider plastics crisis. Two months before the derailment, the United Nations began negotiating a global deal to limit the production and use of plastic. The Ohio disaster is a stark reminder of the human cost of plastic and should fuel calls for this deal to be as strong as possible.
Until then, vinyl chloride and plastic plants will continue to poison the air and send toxic trains down US railroads. The health of local residents, their communities and the environment is at stake. History has shown that this dirty industry threatens to turn even the busiest of small communities into ghost towns.
Rebecca Fuoco is Director of Science Communication at the Green Science Policy Institute. David Rosner, professor of social medicine and history at Columbia, and Gerald Markowitz, professor of history at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, are the authors of “Deception and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution.”
Source: LA Times
Roger Stone is an author and opinion journalist who writes for 24 News Globe. He is known for his controversial and thought-provoking views on a variety of topics, and has a talent for engaging readers with his writing.
