There have been reports of ill and dead animals at the scene of a horrific train disaster in Ohio last Friday, raising concerns about the possible human health effects of the incident.
Taylor Holzer, who owns a dairy farm outside of the evacuation zone in East Palestine, told reporters that some of the foxes he maintains are in critical condition.
Holzer said that one of his animals began coughing, and he had watery diarrhea and just passed very rapidly.
He said some have weeping eyes, had puffy cheeks, and have refused to eat for days.
This doesn’t simply come out of nowhere, Holzer concluded. He felt that the hazardous train smoke and chemicals were to blame. Despite what we’ve been told, toxins in the air are unsuitable for animals or humans.
As 50 carriages on a Norfolk Southern Railroad train headed for Pennsylvania derailed, a lethal combination of chemicals, including highly poisonous vinyl chloride and hydrogen chloride, flowed out.
A controlled fire was carried out in the region to prevent a “catastrophic tanker failure” from causing a massive explosion, which was the authorities’ primary concern.
After a three-day mandatory evacuation this week, homeowners were advised it was okay to return to their houses since the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had been performing continual air-monitoring tests and found no harmful hazards.
Yet there are still isolated reports of dead animals beyond the safe zone, fueling widespread panic.
According to North Lima resident Amanda Breshears, her video camera evidence shows her hens were completely OK before they began the fire, and as soon as they started this burn, her chickens died. Before 2012, a railway disaster in Paulsboro, New Jersey, released vinyl chloride into the environment. According to an information sheet published by that state’s Department of Health that year, it is unknown if short-term exposure to vinyl chloride might create long-term health problems.
Newer research on vinyl chloride has linked it to an increased risk of cancer in humans and animals. The Wisconsin Department of Health Services provides a fact sheet on the subject.
