East Palestine Residents Diagnosed With Chemical Bronchitis After Train Derailment
The ongoing environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, is likely the worst environmental disaster in United States history. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources estimates that 38,222 minnows and 5,550 other species (such as chickens, crayfish, fish, foxes, frogs and sheep) have died as a direct result of the February 3 chemical spill when a 150-car train derailed. Fortunately, no humans died.
Everyone within a 1-mile radius of the site was evacuated before the government set fire to an undetermined amount of vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate and ethylene glycol monobutyl. But the toxic fumes spread over roughly 2,000 square miles downwind of the burn site, exposing thousands of people to small amounts of phosphene gas. This exposure is causing dozens of cases of chemical bronchitis.
Toxic fumes: Local resident Melissa Blake told nbc News that she was diagnosed with bronchitis after she started coughing up gray mucus in the wake of the train crash. Such symptoms are worrying, and Blake is not the only resident experiencing them. Deborah Weese, a nurse practitioner at Quickmed Columbiana, told nbc that she has evaluated as many as 10 people per day who have symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic chemicals. Howard Yang, a manager at a manufacturing company near the derailment site, told nbc News that half of his workers were too sick to work three weeks after the train derailment.
People ended up with rashes, nausea, vomiting, bloody nose, eye issues. A lot of coughing, wheezing. We sent a lot of workers to the hospital to get checked out, and sure enough, in most cases, it was a diagnosis of “chemical bronchitis.”
—Howard Yang
Cover-up: Federal and state officials have repeatedly said it is safe for evacuated residents to return to the area, but many do not trust the government. The Federal Emergency Management Agency refused to help East Palestine for two weeks, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg did not visit for three weeks. In fact, many believe Buttigieg never would have visited the contamination site if Donald Trump did not show up in East Palestine with 13 pallets of clean water.
It is clear that the government wants to put this environmental disaster behind it as quickly as possible while the residents of East Palestine find out the hard way whether or not their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink. This level of hypocrisy and deadly wielding of power goes beyond callous indifference. It reveals a deadly spirit of hatred for America’s origins, purpose and effect on the world. To understand what is going on, request a free copy of America Under Attack and compare it to what your Bible says—and to the daily headlines.
