East Palestine, One Year After Train Derailment
Lisa Mahoney’s science lab, as her husband Dave jokingly calls it, isn’t much to look at: about a dozen black garbage bags slumped in a basement corner beneath their sturdy, 110-year-old home in East Palestine, Ohio. She picks one up and dumps it at her feet. Inside are hundreds of ziplock bags, each marked with a date and description in black sharpie. Mostly, they contain bloody tissues.
“It is gross,” Lisa admits. “My poor children, when I’m no longer, they’ll use my bloody tissues and clone me, so they’ll never have to be without their mom.”
Last February, a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying 11 tanker cars of hazardous chemicals derailed and caught fire a half mile from Lisa’s home. Emergency responders, worried about the potential for some of the tank cars to explode, evacuated much of the town. Within a few days, the evacuation order was lifted, as federal and state officials assured residents that it was safe to return.
Many residents soon began experiencing strange symptoms: nausea, headaches, digestive problems, rashes, and cysts around their mouths. Lisa Mahoney hadn’t had a nosebleed since she was 3 years old, but upon returning to her home, which now reeked of burnt plastic, she started getting them multiple times a week. She also began experiencing a host of other ailments: nausea, headaches, diarrhea, tingling in her hands and fingers. Walking home from his job as a substitute teacher at the local public school, Dave would often get headaches and have trouble breathing as he passed Sulphur Run, a creek that runs through the site of the derailment. One night in March, he felt a sharp pain in his lungs and struggled to catch his breath. Lisa rushed him to the hospital. Doctors were unable to determine if his symptoms were connected to the derailment. They advised him to take a Tylenol and come back if it got worse.
Lisa started keeping a daily tally of her symptoms on old worksheets from her job as an art teacher. She consulted a lawyer, who advised her to save her furnace filters in case they carried evidence of chemical contamination that could be used in future litigation. Lisa went far beyond the suggestion; she began keeping everything related to the aftermath of the disaster that she could: paper towels she used to wipe down her kitchen, a few strands of Dave’s leg hair, some dirt from their yard, and dozens upon dozens of used tissues from the endless nosebleeds. She hoped her samples might be used in future research, perhaps for a study that could help victims of future chemical accidents. And keeping records helped her feel more in control, calming the anxiety that, since the fire, arose every time she heard a siren go past her house. “It’s part of my therapy, if you will,” she says.
State and federal agencies have continuously reassured residents that the town is safe. But many people here say it feels like they are being gaslighted by their own government, intent, for some reason, on covering up the extent of the disaster. Yet many locals were not sickened, and some resent the resident groups calling for more chemical testing and health screenings, which they think has driven away potential visitors and impeded East Palestine’s economic recovery after the disaster. Some have even accused neighbors of making up medical symptoms for attention.
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