EAST PALESTINE — Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, along with the Ohio EPA, Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and Ohio Department of Agriculture, provided an update on the recent train derailment in East Palestine.
In a letter to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Governor DeWine requested that medical experts be sent to East Palestine to evaluate and counsel community members experiencing symptoms or with questions.
Emergency response teams have also put plans in place to prevent contaminants from washing into local waterways during rainfall, including damming Sulphur Run and pumping clean creek water from the point of the eastern dam, funneling it away from the dry creek bed area, and releasing it back into Sulphur Run at the western dam.
Butyl acrylate, officials said, a water-soluble chemical, has slipped beyond mitigation dams and booms into the Ohio River, but aeration points have been added to remove the chemical.
Additionally, the U.S. EPA is continuing to monitor air purity in the East Palestine area, the governor’s office said, and is not detecting any VOCs from the train crash. About 3,150 cubic yards of contaminated soil have been removed from the area, and 942,000 gallons of contaminants and contaminated liquid have been removed from the immediate site.
No vinyl chloride, the governor said, or hydrogen chloride was detected in homes tested for the presence of VOCs.
