For all the modern amenities afforded to us by industrial civilization, there is a trade-off: periodically, an accident will release hazardous chemicals into environments where they don't belong. This sets in motion a familiar ritual in which the public must learn the names of industrial compounds they have never heard of before, and then attempt to weigh the relative degree of the existential and public health crisis posed by said chemicals.
Despite viral videos of streams and creeks littered with dead fish, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the state's Republican Gov. Mike DeWine assured the town's residents that the municipal water has not been contaminated.
Being exposed to an industrial disaster is anxiety-inducing, and yet this taxing routine is sadly becoming more quotidian. The latest toxic exposure event occurred on February 3, when 150 freight train cars operated by the transportation corporation Norfolk Southern derailed and crashed in the town of East Palestine, Ohio. While there were no initial human fatalities or injuries, many of the tank cars contained hazardous chemicals, which put the nearly 5,000 residents of the town at risk. Those who lived within a mile of the crash and fire were initially told to evacuate "to avoid the risk of death or serious injuries from the chemicals." The chemicals aboard included vinyl chloride, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate, butyl acrylate and isobutylene.
Since then, residents have been told it's safe to return home. Despite viral videos of streams and creeks littered with dead fish, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the state's Republican Gov. Mike DeWine assured the town's residents that the municipal water has not been contaminated. DeWine even recently drank water straight from the faucet.
Those who study history know that there is reason not to trust the official account. From the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska to the Flint water crisis, the deleterious health effects stemming from chemical accidents don't always emerge overnight, and those in charge can't always be trusted.
"This is why people don't trust government," environmental activist Erin Brockovich tweeted on Feb. 13 in a missive regarding the East Palestine train derailment. "You cannot tell people that there has been and continues to be hazardous pollutants contaminating the environment while at the same time saying 'all is well.' People aren't stupid."
While the crash in Ohio is certainly a vivid reminder of Americans' public distrust in government, it also highlights the lack of collective knowledge in identifying and understanding the dangers of toxic chemicals. In an age where misinformation runs rampant online, coupled with the rise of the citizen scientist, it can be hard for everyday people and the media to truly understand the toxicity and danger of a chemical. Journalists unfamiliar with science and health reporting may get facts wrong about chemical safety, and reading technical papers about industrial chemicals can be a difficult exercise for a non-expert.
Indeed, as one chemistry professor told Salon, public knowledge about industrial chemical accidents is often sparse due to lack of regulation.
"As a chemist, I understand that everything is made of chemicals, so when we talk about chemicals at the popular level — especially in things like clean beauty products, or in the wellness space — there's a lot of fear of 'chemicals' that may or may not be well-founded," Katie Mauck, an assistant professor of chemistry at Kenyon College told Salon. "And one of the real challenges, I think, is that there's not enough regulation."
Without regulation, it is difficult to know both the acute and long-term effects of industrial chemicals. As Mauck pointed out, sometimes when it comes to public knowledge of a chemical's adverse effects, such information only comes after a big accident.
"We only get that information if a terrible accident has happened," Mauck said. "And if it's been appropriately tracked and monitored after that event."
Mauck said if she were in East Palestine right now, she would be asking: "Do we know anything about the long-term effects of low-level chronic exposure to these chemicals?"
Mark Jones, a retired industrial chemist, told Salon one of the issues with regulation is that the people in charge aren't necessarily experts.
"One of the challenges with things like the transportation of chemicals that are dangerous is that the person who makes the decision to transport the material actually is far away from any impact of anything like this derailment happening," Jones said, adding that regulation with expert input is needed.
Mauck pointed out that the Norfolk Southern FAQ asks: "If I smell a strange odor; should I be worried?" to which Norfolk Southern responds "Non-hazardous materials can produce odors when on fire; while these odors may be irritating, they do not indicate that you are being exposed." Mauck objects to the company's phrasing: "That's just not true — if you can smell it you are being exposed," she said. "The question is, 'Are you being exposed at a high enough level to cause adverse effects either on an acute or chronic scale?'"
Given that both the local government and the offending corporation have a vested interest in always depicting industrial accidents as under control, it is logical for the public to be distrustful of their narrative. Most concerned citizens would be apt to turn to the internet next. But Mauck stressed the importance of context in compiling this kind of information about chemical safety and health.
"Even when hazards are fully recognized and accurately understood and unambiguous, people will still look at them through different eyes because their risk tolerance is different," Jones said.
"I think it's really important to ground this in terms of how we quantify or think about chemical hazards," Mauck said. "The adverse effects of chemical exposure come from dosage, the route of exposure, and then the vulnerability of the organism." Mauck added for example, children and pregnant people are usually more vulnerable to exposure to adverse chemical reactions. "It's not 'I've been exposed to this chemical, and now, all of these bad effects that I'm reading about are going to happen,'" she said, emphasizing that dosage is very important as well.
Mauck said the The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) has a lot of public-facing information about chemicals that the public can access. She added that anyone can access material safety data sheets (MSDS), which are available for any chemical that is available for purchase, too. Though they are technical in nature, such data sheets typically have a "hazard statement" that explains the dangers the chemical poses; as well as a section on "toxicological information" that will list the health hazards and the route of entry.
For instance, the material safety data sheet for vinyl chloride, 1.1 million pounds of which were spilled by Norfolk Southern's derailed train, notes that it is a "known human carcinogen" for which there is "sufficient evidence." It also states that vinyl chloride is most toxic if ingested, and "relatively non-toxic" via inhalation.
"The MSDS is especially important if there's an accident that happens in lab, there's a chemical injury or there's a fire, it's made to be read specifically for figuring out what the hazards are," Mauck said. "So the MSDS is where we go."
Jones agreed that material safety data sheets are useful information sources, but also cautioned that the way they are written they can often make a given chemical's potential hazards look worse than they really are. As an example, Jones noted that the MSDS for many everyday chemicals, including certain salts, make them sound quite dangerous.
"I suggest that you [look at] the one for sodium hydroxide — which is caustic soda, it's a drain cleaner — and salt, and do a side by side and I think you'll be a little surprised how bad salts sound," Jones said. "I think that's part of the trouble, the required understanding to look at these things is difficult."
"For anything that's being transported at scale for the chemical industry, chances are your MSDS is probably going to be a good indication of the level of hazard," Mauck said.
Indeed, Fischer Scientific's material safety data sheet for table salt (sodium chloride) describes it as a "white solid" that "may cause eye, skin, and respiratory tract irritation." Later, it reads: "use with adequate ventilation. Minimize dust generation and accumulation. Avoid contact with eyes, skin, and clothing. Avoid ingestion and inhalation."
But material safety data sheets do have great utility for communicating danger. When it comes to the East Palestine accident, Mauck said ethylhexyl acrylate, which is one of chemicals spilled in the crash, has an MSDS that immediately inspires fear. Ethylhexyl acrylate's MSDS makes obvious that this is a chemical you don't want to touch, breathe, or release into fisheries.
"For anything that's being transported at scale for the chemical industry, chances are your MSDS is probably going to be a good indication of the level of hazard," Mauck said.
But Jones said weighing the safety risk of these hazardous chemicals is complex because of risk tolerance.
"Even when hazards are fully recognized and accurately understood and unambiguous, people will still look at them through different eyes because their risk tolerance is different," Jones said. "So you will clearly have people saying 'we should transport no vinyl chloride,' and you'll have other people saying 'look at the track record, we do this safely 99.99% of the time.'"
Indeed, in certain countries, vinyl chloride would never be transported via train in the first place due to different regulations and industrial processes. As Shanghai Daily journalist Andy Boreham pointed out, vinyl chloride is rarely transported in China because "China has implemented a system whereby vinyl chloride is made locally from calcium carbide, which is much safer to transport."
Many citizens might respond the disaster and question the use and transport of so many hazardous chemicals. But Mauck said that their use in industry, and ultimately in producing consumer goods, has become normalized.
"There are so many things that we're interacting with all the time that make them the right texture, that make them soluble in the right way, and give them a different color," Mauck said. "There are all these things that we expect from, like, our Post-It notes, our cosmetics, our furniture and the type of paint we're using, that have just kind of become things that we don't even think about anymore. But most of that stuff is being either mixed with or coming from some type of petroleum-derivative chemical."
