The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is monitoring the air quality near East Palestine, Ohio after a train derailment on Friday knocked 50 train cars off their track and sparked a fire that sent columns of black smoke skyward.
The big concern was the instability of the chemicals in some of the tanker cars — particularly five cars that contained the chemical vinyl chloride, which has been linked to cancer.
Five tankers contained approximately 500,000 pounds of the chemical. On Monday afternoon, officials evacuated the area ahead of a controlled release of the hazardous chemical.
The big question for residents in surrounding areas is what the health impacts will be for people who were possibly exposed to vinyl chloride in the air around the derailment.
Doctors who specialize in environmental contamination said it’s hard to say if people will develop cancer or other diseases or suffer any ill effects at all from exposure.
Vinyl chloride is associated with an increased risk of liver cancer and other cancers, according to the National Cancer Institute.
There’s a dose-to-duration ratio for a chemical like vinyl chloride, said University Hospitals’ Chief of the Department of Cardiology Sanjay Rajagopalan, who specializes in the environment's impact on health.
“I think if you are chronically exposed, that's much worse than a single acute exposure," he said. "If it's a single acute exposure, you're better off getting a small dosage than a higher dosage. And after that, it gets a little bit fuzzy.”
So far, the EPA said it has not detected amounts in the air that would be toxic. But Ohio’s governor called the need to leave the area “a matter of life and death” during a press conference Monday.
There are symptoms if one inhales polyvinyl chloride at great enough levels, said University Hospitals medical toxicologist Ryan Marino.
“You would expect to see... irritation of the mouth, the nose, the skin, the lungs as kind of primary effects," he said. "If people are not having those, and we're hearing that the levels are safe, they're probably not a big concern at this point.”
Whether people will have long-term health effects depends on the volume of chemicals involved in the exposure and how long it lasted, he said.
