The consequences of the derailment of a train carrying chemicals are causing concern in the United States, intensified by the spread of false information on social networks. The accident happened on the last day 3 in the city of East Palestine, in Ohio.
Around 2,000 residents had to be evacuated from the region due to the danger of intoxication, but they have now been allowed to return. Even with the authorities’ assurance that the danger has passed, however, hundreds of people are reluctant to return to their homes.
Publications with an alarmist tone on social networks mistakenly compared the case to the Chernobyl nuclear accident, which happened in 1986, in Ukraine, and relegated consequences for decades. At the time, authorities hid from the population information about the explosion of a reactor that released into the atmosphere radiation 400 times higher than that emitted by the atomic bomb of Hiroshima.
The tragedy in the former Soviet Union cannot be compared to the accident that occurred in Ohio, where the release of toxic gases no longer poses a danger to the population. This Monday (12), the US Environmental Protection Agency reported that it did not detect “worrying levels” of substances harmful to health in the air and that the supply of drinking water in the region was not impacted either.
The derailment on the last day 3 caused the spill of vinyl chloride, a substance considered dangerous for being highly flammable and carcinogenic. Three days later, emergency teams worked to release the material that did not leak from the wagons in the accident.
The action involved a controlled explosion, generating a dense column of black smoke in the atmosphere. “The explosion went according to plan,” Sandy Mackey, a spokesman for the Ohio Emergency Management Agency, told Reuters.
The train, operated by the Norfolk Southern Railroad and consisting of three locomotives and 150 boxcars, was heading from Illinois. Investigations point out that the derailment happened because an axle was broken. No one was hurt.
Two Pennsylvania residents have already filed a federal lawsuit against Norfolk Souther. The lawsuit attempts to require the company to ensure health monitoring for local residents.
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