Latest / Stereo Chemistry / C&EN Uncovered: Ongoing tragedies in Flint and East Palestine

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C&EN Uncovered: Ongoing tragedies in Flint and East Palestine · Stereo Chemistry

0:00
Craig Bettenhausen: Craig, welcome to CNN uncovered. I'm
0:07
Craig Bettenhausen. CNN uncovered is a podcast series
0:10
from stereo chemistry. In each episode, we'll take another look
0:13
at a recent cover story in chemical and Engineering News
0:16
and hear from CNN reporters about striking moments from the
0:19
reporting, their biggest takeaways and what got left on
0:21
the cutting room floor. In this episode, we're talking about two
0:25
recent cover stories on the lasting effects of human made
0:28
disasters on the people of East Palestine, Ohio and Flint,
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Michigan, two communities separated by less than 300 miles
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that have faced continued hardships after tragedy struck.
0:38
Our story of 2020 three's Norfolk Southern freight train
0:41
derailment in the Ohio town of East Palestine appeared in the
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February 26 issue of CNN. Our piece on Flint appeared in the
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May 6 issue. We'll put links to each story in today's show
0:52
notes. I'm here with CNN physical sciences reporter
0:55
Priyanka runewal, who wrote both articles. Hi Priyanka.
0:58
Priyanka Runwal: Hi Craig. Thanks for having me.
1:00
Craig Bettenhausen: So for anyone that hasn't had a chance
1:02
to read these stories yet, can you give a brief recap of what's
1:05
in each article?
1:07
Priyanka Runwal: So the two stories like you mentioned are
1:09
about the two environmental disasters that have deeply
1:13
impacted communities living in towns where these disasters
1:16
unfolded now in East Palestine, Ohio, a freight train carrying a
1:20
whole bunch of things, including hazardous chemicals, derailed
1:24
from its tracks in February 2023 and offended the lives of many
1:28
people. And in a very controversial move, authorities
1:31
released and burned vinyl chloride. This is a chemical
1:34
that's flammable, carcinogenic, used for making PVC plastics,
1:38
and this chemical, vinyl chloride, was present in five
1:41
train cars. Now, while the EPA has maintained that the air, the
1:44
drinking water and the soil is safe, local people have reported
1:48
feeling sick, and they've been worried about lingering
1:50
contamination and adverse health effects. Now, the second story
1:54
is about Flint, Michigan, where bad decisions were made
1:57
involving the city's drinking water and that caused lead and
2:01
other metals to leach from the city's aging pipes that 10s of
2:04
1000s of residents were exposed to dangerous levels of lead, a
2:08
known neurotoxin, along with potentially carcinogenic
2:12
compounds like trihalomethanes and a waterborne bacterium that
2:15
caused outbreaks of life threatening Legionnaire's
2:18
Disease. 10 years on, the community is still grappling
2:21
with physical and mental health problems that was unleashed by
2:24
this environmental disaster. So earlier this year, I traveled to
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East Palestine, and then in March to Flint to meet people
2:30
who've been living through these crises. Talk to scientists
2:34
who've been doing independent environmental and health
2:37
monitoring in the areas, and government officials who are in
2:39
charge of protected people in these situations.
2:43
Craig Bettenhausen: Central to the lasting problems in East
2:45
Palestine is this decision that the company made to drain the
2:48
chemicals into a pit and then set the pit on fire. What was
2:52
the point of setting the pit on fire? Why not just drain it and
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haul it away?
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Priyanka Runwal: Well, that was certainly one option, but
2:59
Norfolk southernized contractors proposed to the decision makers
3:03
that the release and burning of the vinyl chloride was the only
3:06
viable option. An on ground team had noted an increase in the
3:10
temperature of one of the rail car shell and they concluded
3:13
that the stabilized vinyl chloride in the tank had started
3:16
to polymerize. Now another worry was that the pressure relief
3:20
devices on these railcars had malfunctioned. So if the
3:23
polymerization was occurring, pressure buildup could lead to
3:26
an explosion, which would send toxic gasses and sharpened in
3:29
all directions. Now, experts say that such polymerization cannot
3:33
happen without an initiation of compound that would trigger such
3:37
a reaction. Also the temperature the ground crew noted wasn't
3:41
high enough to indicate that exothermic reaction was
3:45
occurring. But there is another important aspect. The
3:48
temperature did continue to rise, as one would expect to see
3:51
when polymerization occurs, but the temperature had started to
3:55
decline before the wendenburg decision was made. Now in recent
3:58
hearings where the National Transportation Safety Board
4:01
presented the findings of their investigation into this
4:04
derailment. They concluded that this vent and burn was
4:07
unnecessary and that Norfolk Southern provided incomplete
4:10
information to decision makers who had few minutes to make that
4:15
call. Now the theory goes that the train company did this to
4:18
clear the tracks as soon as possible so they could start
4:21
moving stuff again. But Norfolk Southern defends its actions by
4:25
saying that other options to remove vinyl chloride weren't
4:29
feasible because the derailed cars had sustained damage, and
4:33
that the conditions on the ground were pretty dangerous. So
4:38
let's
4:38
Craig Bettenhausen: turn to Flint. Flint is about a big
4:40
story that's an international news. When the lead level spiked
4:44
in Flint, how has the water contamination affected the
4:48
community there?
4:49
Priyanka Runwal: The interesting thing in Flint is that several
4:52
people initially, and especially children, got their blood lead
4:57
levels tested when that. Happened, there was indication
5:02
that their lead levels are well above their dangerous lead
5:07
levels. They're well above, you know, what is considered okay or
5:10
not less problematic. One of the things that has been documented,
5:15
to a very large extent is mental health issues now living through
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a water crisis like this, where you have people in power that
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are essentially supposed to protect people and be
5:26
transparent about environmental issues at play, why people may
5:32
be experiencing certain symptoms that they do the initial years
5:35
of the water crisis, or the initial months of the water
5:37
crisis, people in power were really not being transparent
5:41
with folks living in those communities. People were on the
5:44
ground protesting, and you had people in power tell them, you
5:48
know it's all fine and it's safe. And then you had
5:51
independent researchers coming in and testing their water and
5:55
telling them you know otherwise. And so people have lived through
6:00
a lot of trauma. Parents extremely worried that the high
6:04
levels of lead that physicians in their town were testing the
6:08
blood lead levels of the children, the high levels that
6:11
they were detecting, what would that mean for their children's
6:14
health? Parents, having lived through a lot of this, have
6:17
experienced mental health issues. Initially, some studies
6:21
had also documented reproduction related issues in Flint women
6:27
that they've linked to the water crises. So you have a whole
6:31
range of things that the community has experienced
6:34
initially, and issues like hypertension in adults that
6:37
people are still continuing to document.
6:40
Craig Bettenhausen: So in both articles, especially the flint
6:42
one, but both of them, you had these frank and honest
6:45
discussions about the impact of race and class on what's
6:49
happening. Tell me about how you approach writing about some of
6:52
these culturally fraught topics.
6:55
Priyanka Runwal: In the case of Flint, I mean, I spoke to a
6:58
community member who had been impacted by the Flint water
7:02
crisis, who has been an activist in the community ever since the
7:06
crisis unfolded, and one of the first things he told me was
7:10
that, you know, this is both a race as well as a class issue.
7:15
Flint is a community where it's majority black, it's also a
7:20
community that's heavily poor. So I sort of approached the
7:24
flint story keeping in mind that this is a larger community that
7:27
is dealing with the water crisis in the East Palestine case,
7:31
again, it's a poor community. The socioeconomic dynamics in
7:35
this community are very different. And so the way I sort
7:39
of reported the story was talking to several people and
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really understanding who was impacted most by the disaster in
7:47
whatever way that they were, and just really trying to write it
7:51
from that lens. So
7:52
Craig Bettenhausen: in Flint, the effects are clearly about
7:54
the water. But in East Palestine, where did the
7:57
chemicals end up? Is it in the dirt, the air, the water. So
8:01
Priyanka Runwal: the EPA has been monitoring the air, the
8:03
water and the soil. I mean, the testing sort of indicates that
8:06
the pollutants definitely went into the soil and into the water
8:09
along the railway track. So when I was there, you could see this
8:12
large area that's cordoned off along the railway tracks that
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is, you know, sort of called Ground Zero, where the train
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derailed, where the train cars were sort of lying to rail for a
8:21
long time before the authorities sort of cleaned up that space.
8:26
There are two important local waterways, sulfur run and Leslie
8:29
run. These are creeks that run through East Palestine, and they
8:34
were especially heavily contaminated by chemicals that
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were spilled from the train cars. Now, over time, the amount
8:40
of contaminants in the water had gone down, but the sediments at
8:44
the bottom of these creeks are still potentially contaminated.
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The sediment has been a huge source of tension between the
8:51
community and the authorities that are overseeing these
8:53
cleanup efforts. Often, community members would see a
8:56
rainbow colored sheen on the water potentially indicating the
8:59
presence of blue boil that leak from one of the train cars and
9:03
potentially other stuff, but a lot of the focus currently is to
9:06
clean up and continue testing the area that's sort of around
9:09
that ground zero location.
9:11
Craig Bettenhausen: So what are the biggest discrepancies
9:13
between what the agency reports are showing and what the
9:17
residents are reporting and experiencing?
9:20
Priyanka Runwal: I think especially in the initial few
9:22
weeks after the train derailed, you had the EPA sort of saying,
9:27
it's all fine. The air is safe, based on what we're testing. The
9:30
drinking water is fine. And they had cordoned off around the
9:35
Ground Zero area that they knew was contaminated, and they were
9:37
taking care of that. But on the other hand, you had people who
9:41
had come back to their homes, and they were experiencing
9:45
several symptoms, skin rashes, nosebleeds, tingling of the
9:49
lips, irritation of the nose, eyes, throat, and that was, I
9:55
guess, one of the biggest discrepancies. You know. You
9:57
have people with these symptoms, and they. Don't really
10:00
understand why suddenly they're experiencing all these health
10:04
symptoms that they hadn't seen before. You know, you had people
10:08
experiencing all of this. Well, on the other side, you're
10:12
hearing things are okay, it's fine. And yes, you can have some
10:17
short term symptoms, but even when chemicals are present at
10:21
lower levels, and especially when there are several chemicals
10:24
present at lower levels, we don't really understand, or
10:27
science doesn't really understand so well, how exposure
10:31
to chemicals at low levels and multiple such chemicals at low
10:35
levels, their presence together, could be problematic for
10:38
people's health. We just don't have very good answers to those
10:42
questions. A toxicologist I spoke with said that, you know,
10:45
testing for single chemicals in itself is not enough. So
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Craig Bettenhausen: you and I have moved around and live in a
10:52
lot of places in our lives, but both East Palestine and Flint
10:56
are more multi generational communities. A lot of the
10:59
people, if not most of the people, live in the same houses,
11:02
even that their grandparents and great grandparents lived in. How
11:06
is the recovery going for that community, that culture in these
11:11
two towns? You know, one year on and 10 years on, you know,
11:15
Priyanka Runwal: in Flint, there are people who have left because
11:19
of the water crisis, there are people who have stayed despite
11:24
the water crisis. So Jamie Davis, who is the lead in my
11:29
story, one of the things that she told me was that, you know,
11:32
often she'll have people tell them, you know things are bad.
11:36
You can see things are bad. You're worried for your
11:39
children. Why don't you leave? She said that, you know, it's
11:42
not really easy for people to just leave. They've lived in
11:46
that town for years. You know, multi generations have lived in
11:51
that town for years. That place has been home for them. But it's
11:54
the economics of it also that she explained to me, for us, I
11:58
think it was a two or three bedroom apartment that your
12:00
house that she had in Flint, she paid $600 a month for rent, but
12:05
asked her to move somewhere else outside of Flint, she was going
12:09
to pay a lot more, and she just doesn't make that kind of money.
12:14
And just asking that question, you know, why don't you just
12:16
leave? Is not something that a lot of people can do. In the
12:20
case of East Palestine, Chrissy Hilton, for instance, who is the
12:24
lead character in my story, Chrissy has lived in the house
12:29
ever since she was born, and her family has owned it, I think
12:33
since the 1970s It pains her to not be able to live in that
12:39
house again, but she's so worried about the contamination,
12:42
it pains her to not be able to go back to that home again. But
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at the same time, just moving out of East Palestine to another
12:52
place where she can buy a home, she worries that she may not be
12:55
able to afford it, or she probably cannot afford it. So
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for a lot of people, when you think about recovery, one thing
13:03
that we have to understand people despite knowing that
13:06
there are many environmental challenges that they're
13:09
concerned about, worried about, people can't just move.
13:13
Craig Bettenhausen: So between these two cities, the root cause
13:15
of the contamination is very different, but a lot of the
13:18
dynamics around trying to get response from the agency and the
13:22
responsible companies are similar. Flint's been about 10
13:25
years. East Palestine has been about one year. Are there
13:28
lessons for East Palestine in what Flint has accomplished and
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where they've struggled, and what are those lessons?
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Priyanka Runwal: I think, like you said, you know, the sort of
13:37
situations or the sources of contamination are different. How
13:41
the situation played out are different, but the commonality
13:44
here is the loss of trust between people in power who
13:49
residents in these areas expected will protect them
13:52
against anything that would go wrong and would harm their
13:56
health. That lack of trust, it's sort of central to how things
14:00
have unfolded, in both cases, 10 years on in Flint, that lack of
14:05
trust still doesn't feel restored. Having talked to a lot
14:09
of people there, the city has, in many places, replaced the
14:13
lead service lines the galvanized iron service lines.
14:17
But even though the levels of lead are below what are called,
14:21
quote, unquote, actionable levels. You have scientists on
14:25
one hand that say that you know any amount of lead exposure is
14:28
not good, especially for children. At the same time, you
14:30
have people who whose trust was betrayed. You have lawsuits that
14:36
unfolded, and people in power who were potentially considered
14:42
guilty, were let off the hook. And I suspect that even as
14:47
things change, that lack of trust, which we now see in East
14:51
Palestine, or we have seen in East Palestine, may continue to
14:55
stay because again, you have a. Are people in power who probably
15:02
did not acknowledge some of the very real symptoms that people
15:07
were describing or reporting, and people talking about this
15:12
unpleasant odor in their house, and all of that stuff not being
15:16
taken seriously or not acknowledged properly has sort
15:19
of really led to this lack of trust. And so I don't know if
15:23
there are clear lessons to be learned, but there are
15:26
commonalities that I've seen play out in both places. 10
15:30
years down. If I go to East Palestine and you still see
15:34
people talking about lack of trust in agencies that supposed
15:40
to protect people. I would not be surprised.
15:43
Craig Bettenhausen: So as you walk the streets in these towns,
15:47
do you feel like these are communities that are going to
15:51
return to their pre crisis vibrancy? Are they on the death
15:56
what is the feeling like actually on the streets of these
15:58
towns
15:59
Priyanka Runwal: in East Palestine, for instance, if I
16:02
knew nothing about the fact that, you know, there was a
16:05
train that had derailed, there was an environmental disaster
16:08
that unfolded, I might not necessarily be able to say that
16:11
there's something strange or something eerie about the place,
16:16
but you know, you spent a day or two and you start seeing certain
16:20
things that serve as very clear reminders of you know what
16:25
happened. You have boards or placards that say East Palestine
16:28
strong in several places in town. You walk into the grocery
16:32
store, or you walk into the local diner, and you have the
16:36
pin up board with information about health studies one can
16:41
participate in. You see trucks going in and out of East
16:48
Palestine that are carrying, you know, either contaminated soil
16:52
or contaminated water. It sort of becomes obvious in Flint. On
16:57
the other hand, it has been 10 years, but, you know, people
17:01
still talk about the water crisis like it was yesterday.
17:05
Again, just walking through town, you see certain reminders
17:08
of the water crisis. I remember seeing a mural which has a robot
17:12
in it on it, and it says, fresh produce. And one of the things
17:17
during the water crisis public health officials Doctors told
17:21
parents was to feed the children and their families fresh food,
17:26
fresh fruit, fresh greens, and that sort of reduces the
17:29
absorption of lead into the body, into the blood. You know,
17:32
those little things sort of serve as reminders of that time.
17:36
But again, for some people, the events are so traumatic that
17:41
talking to them feels like yesterday, that this happened.
17:46
Craig Bettenhausen: Priyanka, thanks for diving deep on this
17:48
with us.
17:48
Priyanka Runwal: Thank you so much for having me, Craig.
17:51
Craig Bettenhausen: So for listeners, you can find me on
17:52
social media as at Craig of waffles. Where can they find
17:56
you? You
17:57
Priyanka Runwal: can find me on Twitter. I'm at Priyanka. P, R,
18:00
i, y, a, n, k, a, underscore, runwal, r, u, n, w, a, l, and
18:07
sorry, that's x. Now that's not better anymore.
18:11
Craig Bettenhausen: You can find Priyanka cover stories about
18:13
revisiting East Palestine and Flint on CNN website, or in the
18:17
February 26 and may 6 print editions of CNE, we put links in
18:22
the show notes along with the episode credits. We'd love to
18:24
know what you think of Cen uncovered. You can share your
18:27
feedback with us by emailing cenfeedback@acs.org This has
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been CNE and uncovered a series from Cen en stereo chemistry.
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Stereo chemistry is the official podcast of chemical and
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Engineering News. Chemical Engineering News is an
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independent news outlet published by the American
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Chemical Society. Thanks for listening. You.