An Update on East Palestine: How Chemical Cleanup Leads to Harmful Exposure

The hazardous waste incinerators being used to rid Ohio of harmful chemicals have a history of leakage. The proposed solutions may be contributing to more problems than we originally thought. Here’s what you should know.

In an already poorly handled situation, the same people who created the mess are being tasked with finding ways to clean it up. With a history riddled with corruption and mismanagement, even the solution can lead to problems. East Palestine is already no stranger to outsourced management of the disaster. As was discussed in my first piece and revealed by Kanekoa on Substack, the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health (CTEH) — which is the independent contracting agency that Norfolk Southern contacted to test the air and water in East Palestine after the chemical burning — has a history of corporate collusion and corruption leading to unsafe conditions being labeled safe for human exposure. Similarly, one of the companies being outsourced by the EPA to deal with the incineration of contaminated soil, Heritage Thermal Services, has a history of leakage and air pollution at their East Liverpool, Ohio incinerator. According to a piece published by The Guardian on March 4th, 2023, Heritage Thermal Services is no stranger to controversy.

“The incinerator, owned by Heritage Thermal Services, is already burning PFAS waste from the Department of Defense, which prompted a federal lawsuit from a coalition of local environmental groups. Heritage also faced an investigation and enforcement action from the EPA in 2015 after officials determined the facility had violated the Clean Air Act nearly 200 times between 2010 and 2014.”

Their proposed swift solutions may already be affecting local residents. A report by ZeroHedge describes the plea of local farmers who say that they are already losing out on customers over very legitimate and justified concerns.

“Farmers in the region are already reporting receiving requests to cancel orders due to health concerns. Farmers and food producers in East Palestine and Darlington Township need assistance in responding to this man-made disaster. Despite testing results, the letter said, some consumers will still be apprehensive and refuse to purchase agricultural products from the region because of the contamination. That is why farmers have specifically asked for disaster assistance.”

Residents should ask the question: Is this being handled to maximize safety? The possibility that this is being handled improperly and swiftly in order to maximize profit and sweep controversy under the rug is clear as day, and with the EPA being so starkly aware of these potential problems, one would expect this to be taken into consideration when deciding cleanup options. 

Hazardous Waste Disposal: A History of Environmental Problems

Industry is a pivotal part of the modern American lifestyle. Everything you use on a daily basis has likely been developed through years of industrial processes and optimizations in order to produce a product that fits as many needs as can be written down in an advertisement to sell to you. However, this “optimization process” comes at a cost, that cost being the production of hazardous waste and byproducts. Hazardous waste disposal is an industry filled with controversy. Although it is seemingly a necessity in our lives due to the mass amounts of waste being produced by corporations in industrialized processes, the amount of harm reduction measures being taken to keep everyone safe while conducting disposal has a questionable history. 

Built right on the Ohio river bank, the Heritage Thermal Services hazardous waste incinerator has been subject to controversy since it opened in December of 1992. The contamination of water and airways isn’t a new site for East Liverpool residents. In an article published by local news station WFMJ on February 27th 2023, the history of lawsuits is cataloged.

“In 2007, the incinerator – then operated under the name Waste Technologies Industries – agreed to pay more than $750,000 to settle the claims over emissions from chemicals in storage while awaiting incineration… 

In 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the hazardous-waste incinerator released dangerous toxins into the air over the past four years, exposing those nearby to chemicals that can cause cancer, miscarriages, and early death.

In 2016, plaintiffs Save Our County filed a lawsuit against Heritage Thermal over excess emissions in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. The case was settled on March 1, 2017.”

The history of problems with the East Liverpool incinerator doesn’t just stop there. Back in June of 2022, The Business Journal reported on a fire that broke out in the scrubber building at the same incinerator. Similar to the derailment, this fire also emitted huge plumes of black smoke. 

“Huge plumes of smoke, alternating between snow white and coal black, wafted across the Ohio River as firefighters arrived on the scene and then for several hours, with residents coming outside onto their lawns to watch the billowing clouds.”

Although the spokesman for Heritage Thermal said the incinerator was not processing waste at the time of the fire, it’s still unclear if this incident resulted in the release of chemicals. However, the fire alone is enough to further pollute the Ohio River which has been an ongoing concern for citizens since the incinerator’s inception.

Fazzo et. al, 2017 in Environmental Health found that hazardous waste disposal harms surrounding populations generally through pollution and contamination of the environment around them if not managed properly, which unfortunately is very common.

“These data confirm that hazardous waste, if not suitably managed, might cause adverse health effects on populations living near the sites where they are dumped or processed. The contamination of different environmental matrices, including food, water, soil and air, represents a health risk for these populations.”

The pollution and harm that comes with the way hazardous waste is treated and disposed of isn’t an isolated case relative to Heritage Thermal Services, but rather just another ubiquitous problem that comes with the way industrial processes are handled. Although patterns of behavior can very easily be recognized and established, as was discussed in a report dated February 8th, 2022 for the PFAS Project Lab.

“The city’s East End neighborhood is home to a hazardous waste incinerator with a checkered past. For decades, the facility on the banks of the Ohio River has faced fines for violating federal air quality laws and accusations that its toxic emissions have damaged the health of the surrounding community. Now, the plant is working to burn hazardous waste sent by the U.S. military — a process that Alonzo Spencer, a local environmental activist, is doing all he can to stop. Spencer’s organization, Save Our County… sued the federal government two years ago in an attempt to prevent hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic firefighting foam [containing PFAS] from being incinerated in facilities like the one in East Liverpool.”

Specific chemicals such as PFAS that are classified as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are particularly important to keep an eye on. These are chemicals that can persist in the environment for hundreds if not thousands of years and are known to be some of the most dangerous compounds on the planet. Residents should be made aware of the decisions being made regarding the disposal of waste that could create, be contaminated with, or ultimately result in the release of POPs into the environment.

PFAS: A brief review of the history and literature

Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — informally called “forever chemicals” because bacteria can’t eat them, fire can’t incinerate them, and water can’t dilute them — are persistent organic pollutants. The risks associated with PFAS exposure are relatively unexplored and findings are fairly new, however, observational studies as well as animal trials in vitro have been performed attempting to assess the risks. Pelch et. al, 2022 in Environmental International created “The PFAS-Tox Database” which performed a systematic review of the literature on 29 different PFAS chemicals. Their review concluded that PFAS is carcinogenic as well as an established correlation between general cytotoxicity and PFAS exposure found in 119 different studies.

“[F]or animal and in vitro studies, which shorten the necessary duration of exposure and reduce confounders, there is a dearth of studies directly assessing cancer outcomes associated with PFAS exposure. However, there are animal toxicological and in vitro mechanistic endpoints included in the systematic evidence map that, although not in the “cancer” health outcome category, are among the ten key characteristics of cancer.”

Similarly to dioxin exposure, Ehrlich et. al, 2023 in Environmental Health found that PFAS exposure in early and developmental stages of the immune system results in immunotoxicity:

“Taken together, we show that there is substantial evidence from both in vitro and in vivo experimental as well as epidemiological studies, supporting that various PFAS, not only PFOA and PFOS, affect multiple aspects of the immune system. Timing of exposure is critical, because the developing immune system is especially vulnerable to toxic insults, resulting in a higher risk of particularly adverse immune effects but also other organs later in life.”

Holst et. al, 2021 concluded similarly:

“This review summarizes recent findings of PFAS effects on infant and childhood immune health. Evidence of immunosuppression, diminished vaccine efficacy, and increased risk of infections, allergies, asthma and AD [atopic dermatitis] were described following in utero, infant, and early childhood PFAS exposures.”

Wang et. al, 2022 in Environmental Research concluded that high PFAS exposure leads to reduced fertility rates in women:

“Based on the evidence provided by the current study, increased levels of PFAS exposure are associated with reduced fertility in women, this was characterized by a reduction in fecundability odds ratio and an increase in odds ratio for infertility. This finding could partially explain the decline in female fertility and provide insight into risk assessment when manufacturing products containing PFAS.”

These findings are especially relevant to local residents who risk potential exposure via soil, water and air contamination following the incineration of waste containing PFAS, as was discussed in a piece published by The Guardian on March 4th, 2023:

“Incinerating the soil is especially risky because some of the contaminants that residents and independent chemical experts fear is in the waste, like dioxins and PFAS, haven’t been tested for by the EPA, and they do not incinerate easily, or cannot be incinerated.”

It is important to understand the effect of chemical exposure in early and developmental stages of life. These are the times where pollutants and contaminants damage our bodies the most, and thus extra precautionary measures should be taken to mitigate exposure to these chemicals.

Although this may be easier said than done. For North Carolina residents, an ever growing fear came true, GenX (a chemical in the PFAS family) had leaked into the water supply. NC Policy Watch reports on October 26th, 2021:

“A major source of GenX in North Carolina is Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant near the Bladen-Cumberland County line. (International Paper and DAK Americas also discharge the compound in lesser amounts.) Chemours and its predecessor, DuPont, discharged GenX into the Cape Fear River for decades, contaminating not only the drinking water source for the City of Wilmington, Brunswick County and Pender County, but also private drinking water wells near the plant.”

An article published in Planet Detroit on February 26th, 2023 found similar examples of widespread PFAS contamination, and waste management failure at the US Ecology Landfill in Belleville that resulted in PFAS exposure in Michigan”

“… [D]ioxins don’t move through the environment as readily as PFAS, the so-called “forever chemicals.” … The Belleville site has previously been cited for violations, including toxic leachate spills into surface water. … [H]azardous materials pumped into these wells had bubbled up to the surface at sites in California, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Florida, with similar problems reported in southern Ohio and Pennsylvania.”

Local residents are concerned, and justifiably so. Brusseau et. al, 2020 in Science of The Total Environment concluded”

“Soil concentrations reported for PFAS-contaminated sites are generally orders-of-magnitude greater than background levels. Maximum reported PFOS concentrations ranged upwards of several hundred mg/kg.”

An eerily similar situation to that of North Carolina is playing out right now in East Liverpool, thus furthering a problem that is only now becoming headline news as we figure out just how ubiquitous our exposure to these dangerous chemical compounds are.

Environmental pollution: Why the EPA won’t test for deadly chemicals

In my original article on the train derailment, you heard that the EPA was refusing to test for dioxins, their given reason was that because dioxins are already prevalent in the environment at high rates, and that there was never a proper base statistic provided to compare to current levels, which is not entirely accurate. They are essentially arguing that they would not be able to tell if the area was toxic due to the derailment or if toxic levels were simply just present in the environment already. This raised a lot of red flags. Why is the admission that dioxins are already prevalent enough in the environment to be dangerous not a headline story in itself? This logic follows for all highly dangerous and infinitesimal chemicals in the environment that were undoubtedly worsened (or at least dangers surrounding them were heightened) following the derailment. The EPA won’t test because they don’t want to reveal to the public that contamination of the environment is already a ubiquitous problem that we just have to deal with. This isn’t just a working theory either, the EPA’s own document, the Drinking Water Health Advisory for Perfluorooctane Sulfonate (PFOS), released in May of 2016 found this alarming fact,

“Perfluorooctane sulfonate [a member of the PFAS chemical family] was detected in blood serum in up to 99% of the U.S. general population between 1999 and 2012.”

It would be damning enough if this was the only piece of information revealed in the EPA’s own documentation, but it’s not. 

“PFOS and other PFASs have been reported in wastewater and biosolids as a result of manufacturing activities, disposal of coated paper and other consumer products, and from washing of stain-repellent fabrics.”

Everyday items and everyday tasks may be contributing to the release of PFAS into the environment. Contamination of dangerous chemical compounds is just a normality in modern society. Industrially processed sewage sludge is given to farmers for free and advertised as a safe fertilizer for soil, but its history isn’t without controversy. A piece titled “Sludge, a free fertilizer for farmers, can pose health and environmental risks” published in Indy Week on June 28th, 2010 discusses the history.

“In the early ’90s, the National Federation of Wastewater Treatment Plant Operators held a marketing contest to find a new, more appealing name for sewage sludge. From 250 suggestions, “biosolids” was chosen, but frankly, sewage sludge is largely… manure… 

If sludge were only manure, it would be less alarming. But sludge can contain thousands of chemicals, including arsenic, lead and mercury; parasites, … and microbes that cause diseases such as hepatitis A and food poisoning even after the sludge has been treated at the wastewater treatment plant according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.”

Findings by Renner, 2009 in Environmental Science and Technology compound this fact. Renner found that the EPA recorded PFOS and PFOA levels in Alabama grazing fields well above safety standards. In the paper it’s revealed that when grazing cattle and other farm animals are ingesting industrially processed sludge, PFOS and PFOA may be well above safe levels.

“Transfer of perfluorochemicals to grazing animals may well be a significant concern, says [Murray] McBride, who notes that on pasture lands, sludge spread on top of the field usually is not worked into the soil each time it’s applied. This means that the animals can be ingesting something close to pure sludge, he says. Grazing cattle ingest from 1 to 18% of their dry-matter intake as soil or sludge, he adds…

… It is still unclear how people are exposed, but food, food packaging, household dust, and drinking water are all likely to contribute”

PFAS contamination isn’t the only ubiquitous deadly chemical compound we’re exposed to in our everyday life. As was discussed in my review of the literature on dioxin, there are major implications that come with the use of dioxin contaminated food sources for animals in modern agriculture. Huwe, 2002 concluded with similar findings:

“[F]ish and animal products are the predominant source of human intake and exposure… Reported dioxin levels in farm-raised catfish in the United States have mainly stemmed from a contaminated feed incident caused by the use of a dioxin-containing ball clay additive in the soybean meal component of the diet.”

Cucina et. al, 2021 had similar but more pertinent findings. Bioplastics, as they’ve been dubbed, were sold to the public as eco-friendly alternatives to petroleum based plastic. Some of these bioplastics are biodegradable, although the mechanisms that lead to degradation usually involve the same waste disposal methods that are used in the cleanup of non biodegradable waste, which can lead to improper handling of these bioplastics and subsequent releases of bioplastics into the environment. If “biodegradable” waste is thrown into the same landfills as non biodegradable waste, it will suffer a similar fate, due to the poor conditions for degradation these particles may still end up in soil and water, thus risks need to be studied at length and those in the public should be aware that a product being labeled as biodegradable doesn’t automatically make it safe from becoming a pollutant. The review found as much:

“The possible accumulation of bioplastics and their smallest fragments, as well as their eco-toxicological effects were recently reviewed by Shruti and Kutralam-Muniasamy (2019). They described the generation of microplastics from biobased biodegradable bioplastics… and reported that several studies have identified that some biodegradable microplastics showed the same effects as those of petroleum-derived microplastics (e.g. transfer of chemical contaminants, increased stress in benthic communities).”

Ultimately the story of the East Palestine derailment shines a light on the bigger role that the EPA plays in avoiding and sometimes outright refusing to deal with serious environmental and health concerns that come at the expense of our industrialized world. The Harvard Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics sums up the situation: 

“The EPA has a vast mandate — protecting air, water, land and people from pollutants. But year after year, through both Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses, strong economies and weak ones, the institution fails the American public in many ways. The evidence abounds. Reports by the Government Accountability Office (formerly the General Accounting Office), EPA’s own Inspectors General and the media have long documented EPA’s inability to guard Americans from toxic chemicals, mining waste, leaking Superfund sites, greenhouse gas emissions, contaminated water, air pollution and other hazards.”

For a government agency dedicated to protecting the environment there is a laundry list of negligence and misfeasance that has resulted in the direct harm of both the environment and the general health of the public. Although steps have been taken to reduce public exposure to harmful chemicals (take California’s Public Health Goal for TCDD in Drinking Water from September 2010 as an example) it seems that either these come too little too late, or on the flipside, that pollution is allowed to scrape by with minimal consequences. The EPA never seems to be the one mitigating damage outright, rather, they simply respond after unacceptable levels of pollution and chemical exposure have occurred, and their response is minimal. It’s a far cry from what’s expected of a “regulatory agency,” leaving environmentalists to pick up the pieces in legal proceedings and non-profit on the ground labor through testing and mitigation practices.

East Palestine and surrounding residents should be aware of the risks associated with the proposed solutions to the problems created by the uncontrolled burn that took place on February 3rd. A wider scope of research should be done to analyze and further mitigate problems associated with hazardous waste disposal and environmental pollution by industry as a whole. The ubiquitous nature of chemical exposure is a serious issue for public health and the understanding of these problems ought to be at the forefront of environmentalist action, outside of government bureaucracy and oversight, which is often untimely or outright dismissal.