(Ken Silva, Headline USA) In March, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy testified to Congress that Norfolk Southern’s half-baked plan in February 2023 to ignite chemicals released in its East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment was entirely unnecessary, as officials could have waited for the chemicals to cool down before removing them.
And now, that entirely unnecessary disaster has been revelaed to have affected some 110 million people in the U.S., according to a new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“In total, we estimate at least some impact on portions of 16 states and one-third of the population of the US (110 million), and likely impacts to southern Ontario, and many of the Laurentian Great Lakes,” said the study, which was published in Environmental Research Letters.
The study comes some two months after Norfolk Southern agreed to pay $600 million in a class-action lawsuit settlement to the disaster victims in East Palestine. But the study said researchers were also still tallying the damage done.
“This is only an initial assessment of the impacts of the train derailment on atmospheric and precipitation chemistry, using publicly available NADP-NTN data; much more can be added to this understanding of the accident’s impact,” stated the study.
The Feb. 3, 2023, explosion resulted in a 1 million-pound chemical burn pit, which produced a mushroom cloud that spread toxins for miles.
“I’m not sure Norfolk Southern could have come up with a worse plan to address this disaster. Residents exposed to vinyl chloride may already be undergoing DNA mutations that could linger for years or even decades before manifesting as terrible and deadly cancers,” said one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
The settlement has yet to be approved by a federal judge.
Norfolk Southern has already spent more than $1.1 billion on its response to the derailment, including more than $104 million in direct aid to East Palestine and its residents.
The study was first reported by Courthouse News.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
