(DON THOMPSON / iNFOnews.ca)

OPINION

Trains criss-cross North America every day and night. Locomotives pulling tank cars loaded with chemicals rumble down aging tracks through small rural towns and densely populated big cities.

Millions of gallons of chemicals - some so deadly that just a whiff would kill you - roll down tracks in bad need of repairs. Daily, the cargo comes within a football field’s length of people at work in offices, children in schools, patients in hospitals and families at home as they sleep…millions of people.

This is nothing new…companies have been shipping chemicals and petrol-chemicals by rail for decades. Railroad tracks were in bad repair when I worked for the Du Pont Company more than 40 years ago…and I would talk with the news media…when things went boom in the night.

Actually, last year more than 2.2 million cars moved hazardous materials around America…99.9 percent reached destinations without incident. It’s that one-tenth of one percent that we have to worry about…that’s 22,000 tank cars filled with hazardous materials in accidents.

Nine years ago, in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, a parked 73-car Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway freight train loaded with crude oil broke loose from it parked location outside of town and rolled down a 1.2 percent grade before de-railing downtown, exploding and killing 47 people and burning half the town’s buildings. It remains the worst train wreck in the nation’s history.

America makes 20 times more plastics today than when I was at Du Pont…20 times. In just over ten years the number of manufactured plastics is expected to double again. That’s a lot of chemicals. Today, chemicals and plastics - or more aptly the way we mishandle them - pose an existential threat to our health and welfare. We have oceans with so much plastic in them…you can walk on floating islands of the stuff. Micro-plastics - naked to the eye - are already in our food chain.

And yet, plastics - in packaging alone - mean we can deliver fruits and vegetables to people that would otherwise go without…and die. Even so, the World Health Organization reports that nearly 1.7 million deaths are attributable to low fruit and vegetable consumption every year. One million people would die each year without plastic packaging.

If ever there was a love-hate relationship it is the one we have with chemicals and plastics. There are problems and issues facing society where the solutions are black and white but this one has lots of gray shades. Maybe plastics are a symptom of a more critical problem…getting food to those who need it. But…that is maybe another column.

My column today is about what we do when spills and explosions and so-called controlled burns happen near us, the result of inevitable transportation incidents.

On Feb. 3, a train de-railed in East Palestine, OH, a town of about 4,700 people less than a mile from the Ohio-Pennsylvania state line…50 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, PA. Thirty-eight of the 150 train cars de-railed…leaking butyl acrylate and vinyl chloride…known carcinogens. A fire erupted sending acrid black smoke thousands of feet above the town…later the fire spread to 12 more cars.

Three days after the spill, local fire crews executed a so-called “controlled release” to lessen the possibility of an explosion. Again, a huge black plume of smoke rose thousands of feet into the air for four more days…shifting with the winds…and contaminating nearly 400 houses in the town.

Other chemicals…ethylhexyl acrylate, which can cause headaches, nausea, and respiratory problems; as well as isobutylene and ethylene glycol monobutyl ethers, which can make people dizzy and drowsy…were released, as well.

Beside the obvious inconvenience of being evacuated and having to clean ever surface of your home…inside and out…there are health concerns…short- and long-term. Nine days after the accident, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.), said it had not detected contaminants at “levels of concern” in and around East Palestine, although residents might still smell odours.

My own experience - talking with Du Pont scientists - and common sense lead me to question the E.P.A.’s declaration. While you can see the smoke plume of chemical and plastic fires, it’s like an iceberg, you’re seeing the visible part.

Thousands of people were exposed to the toxins released from the East Palestine accident in an area that extended for miles in all directions…covering the land, rivers, streams, homes, animals and people.

As an example of how things in the air can travel and contaminate, consider the fires in the Okanagan two Summers ago. Particulate - large and small - rained down on our home and pool and horses from eight miles away.

Believe me - because I’ve asked scientists - you don’t want to be anywhere near an accident like the one in East Palestine. You don’t want to return for a week…hopefully after a couple rainfalls. Even then, you want to wear N-95 masks and full body coverings…you need to clean everything in your house…probably twice.

Overstated? I once asked a Du Pont scientist what he would do if there was a large transportation accident involving chemicals and plastics near his home. He said, without blinking, “I’d move.” The trouble is most people effected by such releases are in no position to move. They don’t get huge buyouts of their homes. They don’t get new job offers.

People wait…and hope they don’t get some cancer in ten or 20 years…often while battling ongoing respiratory and skin irritations. Sure, Norfolk Southern - the railway company responsible for East Palestine - will end up paying at most $40 million to $50 million in fines, lawyer fees and court costs, as well as settlements to individuals and the town. That amounts to just 1.7 percent of their profits in 2022.

Norfolk Southern’s management - like other transportation and chemical companies - plan for these accidents…knowing they will happen. It’s a risk assessment…and the answer is always the same: “We can afford it.”

Public companies have shareholders…and they are beholden to them. The industries - chemical, petrol-chemical, railway, trucking and the various companies - all lobby the governments in both the U.S. and Canada to cut regulations on their industries because it takes away profits.

Folks, I’m here to tell you…it takes away more than you know.

— Don Thompson, an American awaiting Canadian citizenship, lives in Vernon and in Florida. In a career that spans more than 40 years, Don has been a working journalist, a speechwriter and the CEO of an advertising and public relations firm. A passionate and compassionate man, he loves the written word as much as fine dinners with great wines.

We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor.

News from © iNFOnews, 2023