Opinion: More toxic derailments will happen if we don’t rein in plastics

Images of dead fish floating in murky water and menacing plumes of gray smoke are haunting the nation’s front pages. Interviews with distressed residents are interspersed with exasperated talking heads on our television screens. More than month after the train derailment disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, America continues to bear witness to the community’s suffering.

Though any fiery train wreck is hazardous, this one was particularly catastrophic given the chemicals onboard. Chief among them was cancer-causing vinyl chloride gas, which officials intentionally released into the surrounding air to avoid an explosion. Residents were evacuated during this operation, but long-term pollution and exposure concerns remain.

For East Palestine, the story is just beginning, and the following chapters are likely to be grim. We know because the same chemical contaminated — and eventually destroyed — several towns in Louisiana decades ago.

Morrisonville, La., was founded after the Civil War by freedmen and blossomed into a vibrant, predominantly African American community. But in 1958, chemical giant Dow built a vinyl chloride plant near the river, displacing the town’s sugar and cotton plantations. Blaring sirens warning of toxic releases soon became a part of daily life. During these events, residents were told to close windows and doors and huddle inside to avoid breathing in too much of the toxic fumes.

When environmental groups and the EPA started noticing increased diseases and dying fish in the 1980s, Dow made modest offers to buy residents out of their homes, often barely enough to buy or rent a new home. By the early 1990s, the town was entirely abandoned, save for a graveyard.

A similar fate befell Mossville, Louisiana. Vinyl chloride producers polluted the town and a decade ago began buying out residents when the toxic consequences were borne out.

Vinyl chloride production not only laid waste to these towns, but it also contributed to the surrounding region becoming known as “Cancer Alley.” Seven of the 10 U.S. census tracts with the highest cancer risks from air toxics are in this area, according to a 2014 EPA analysis.

The East Palestine train was carrying this dangerous chemical because of a booming plastics industry that’s expanding to Ohio and other parts of Appalachia. What happened in Louisiana will happen elsewhere too unless swift action is taken.

PVC is ubiquitous, used in products as wide-ranging as toys and pipes. But it’s also very replaceable. Materials experts say that alternatives including glass, ceramics, linoleum and polyesters are feasible substitutes in most cases. That’s why it would be a commonsense move for the government to restrict all nonessential uses of PVC, giving way to a phaseout of vinyl chloride production.

PVC has already been banned in most food packaging in Canada and South Korea, and legislation to ban it has been floated in California. However, more comprehensive action is needed on PVC — and on the larger plastics crisis. Two months before the derailment, the United Nations kicked off negotiations for a global treaty to limit the production and use of plastic. The Ohio disaster is a stark reminder of plastic’s human costs and should energize calls to make this treaty as strong as possible.

Until then, vinyl chloride and plastics plants will continue to poison air and send toxic trains barreling across America’s railways. What’s at stake is the health of nearby residents, their communities and the environment. History has shown that this dirty industry risks turning even the liveliest small communities into ghost towns.

Rebecca Fuoco is the director of science communications at the Green Science Policy Institute. David Rosner is a professor of sociomedical sciences and history at Columbia. Gerald Markowitz is a history professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. They are the authors of “Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution.” ©2023 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

For more latest Health News Click Here 

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! FineRadar is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – abuse@fineradar.com. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.
derailmentsdontfineradar updatehappenhealth newsOpinionplasticsreinToxic
Comments (0)
Add Comment