The East Palestine train derailment: A complex environmental disaster

This symposium, The East Palestine Train Derailment: A Complex Environmental Disaster, brought together scientists whose research represented initial scientific responses to the community health impacts of the chemical exposures incurred from a disastrous train derailment and subsequent combustion in East Palestine, Ohio in February, 2023. This derailment and burn led to multiple complex toxic exposures to air, soil and water, including vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate. Presenters described the multi-university consortium formed to assist with developing and communicating data-informed summaries to the affected community. Presenters also reported on the immediate health sequelae experienced by the community and the stress and uncertainty regarding long term effects. Plans were reported for several pilot studies funded by the National Institute on Environmental Health Sciences in immediate response to the disaster. Fredrick Schumacher, PhD outlined the aims of The Healthy Futures Research Study: Linking Somatic Mutation Rate with Baseline Exposure in East Palestine that plans to use somatic mutation rate (SMR) to measure the biological impact of environmental exposures based on proximity to the train derailment and residents’ clinical symptomatology. James Fabisiak, PhD shared plans for their study, East Palestine Community-Engaged Environmental Exposure, Health Data, and Biospecimen Bank that will measure chemical contaminants in indoor air and water in homes, monitor liver damage in residents and identify parents’ concerns about children’s health and development. As part of that study, Laura Dietz, PhD noted the major psychosocial stressors experienced by the community, particularly the psychological effects on children which the study will try to identify through parental report. Timothy Ciesielski, MD, PhD summarized the difficulties of drawing conclusions related to health and safety risk from the toxicants released through currently available government databases and his experience trying to provide the community with reliable and valid information in the context of working across state lines and multiple state and federal agencies.