A Norfolk Southern train derailed in the quiet town of East Palestine, Ohio, two years ago. After two years, you would think this story would be open and closed, that East Palestine would go back to being the small, working-class town it was. But you would be wrong. Its residents were betrayed by our government’s Environmental Protection Agency.
Ever since Feb. 3, 2023, residents of East Palestine have struggled with serious health conditions that were nonexistent before the derailment. When the EPA allowed the Norfolk Southern Railway to burn five cars filled with vinyl chloride and other toxic chemicals, more than 100 dangerous compounds, including dioxins and phosgene, were formed, blanketing the town and nearby Pennsylvania communities with a black cloud. Dioxin, the most dangerous forever chemical known to man, was the active ingredient in Agent Orange, a human rights atrocity in the Vietnam War.
