Pollution from East Palestine derailment last year spread as far as Wisconsin, study finds
Pollution from last year's fiery train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio carried to more than a dozen states — reaching as far as Wisconsin, new research shows.
The Feb. 3, 2023, accident, in which about 50 Norfolk Southern train cars crashed into each other and started a fire, had massive environmental impacts on the surrounding community because some of the cars released toxic materials into the air and water.
A study released this week by researchers from the National Atmospheric Deposition Program, housed at Wisconsin's state hygiene lab, tracked contaminants that rose into the air and fell across other parts of the country by rain or snow.
That process happens because of a process called atmospheric deposition, which occurs when pollutants in the air get absorbed by precipitation. When rain or snow comes through, it effectively washes the atmosphere clean, said program coordinator David Gay, the lead researcher on the study. It's why the sky usually looks bluer afterward.
Gay said he was "bowled over" when his analysis showed traces of the fire in the snow that fell in Wisconsin the week of the derailment. Though the contaminant concentrations were low enough they wouldn't have done damage to people or the environment, he called it a good reminder to the public.
"It's more evidence that we're all tied together," he said. "Just because an accident happens in Ohio doesn't mean it can't make it to Wisconsin."
More: Rail merger means more hazardous materials shipped along upper Mississippi River
The National Atmospheric Deposition Program collects rain and snow before it hits the ground at 260 sites across North America, helping researchers determine where pollution is coming from and where it goes. In this case, Gay said, the team was looking for chloride, because train cars containing vinyl chloride had been set on fire to avert a larger explosion.
The concentrations of chloride they found in the rain and snow samples were much higher than normal the week of the accident, as were the pH of the samples and concentrations of sodium and calcium, which are common in fire suppressants. These elevated concentrations ranged as far east as Maine, as far south as Virginia and North Carolina, and as far west as Wisconsin. (Gay said he set Wisconsin as the western boundary of the samples he examined, so it's possible the pollutants actually could have traveled further.)
The researchers also examined the direction of the wind that week to back up their findings. Modeling from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed the air flowed both northeast and southeast from the site of the derailment and there was a low-pressure center over Lake Michigan, Gay said. The low-pressure center would have blown air from Ohio north, and then west.
Finally, researchers ruled out other factors that could have caused the higher chloride concentrations, like road salt. The concentrations fell back into normal range a few weeks after the derailment.
Gay said detailed monitoring is critical to tracking how far these pollutants can travel. In 2011, when a tsunami flooded Japan's Fukushima Daichii Nuclear Power Plant and caused radioactive material to leak into the atmosphere, dustings of radionuclides were found in about one-fifth of rain and snow samples across the U.S.
Madeline Heim is a Report for America corps reporter who writes about environmental issues in the Mississippi River watershed and across Wisconsin. Contact her at 920-996-7266 or mheim@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin got East Palestine train derailment pollution, study says
