The 100-car train derailment from Norfolk Southern and the ensuing highly toxic chemical fallout that took place in East Palestine, Ohio, ended up forcing close to half of the U.S. government investigators to report experiencing symptoms of illness while studying the possible health impacts, explained officials.
CNN was informed late last week by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that seven of the fifteen-member team, which included several members from the Epidemic Intelligence Service, reported feeling strange and concerning symptoms while carrying out surveys on the homes of the town residents closeby to the contaminated areas.
“Symptoms resolved for most team members later the same afternoon, and everyone resumed work on survey data collection within 24 hours,” a CDC spokesperson stated to the network. “Impacted team members have not reported ongoing health effects.”
Both state and local authorities previously evacuated all residents living within a one-mile radius of the February 3 derailment site and started a controlled burn of substances on the vehicle. A total of five of those train cars leaked vinyl chloride, a highly carcinogenic chemical to humans utilized in the creation of PVC, and formed massive pillars of dark acrid smoke which could be utilized throughout both western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Residents have since sounded the alarm due to newly forming health problems that they experienced after the chemical burn-off.
Prior to working from their hotels, a number of the investigation group members started to deal with headaches, sore throats, nausea, and coughing, which has been recorded as mirroring the symptoms by many of the town’s residents near the derailment site.
No federal officials have spoken up to disclose just what caused investigators to deal with such symptoms.
A pair of contractors out of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 100 present personnel working in the area of the derailment also reported a number of health symptoms after working in areas where the chemicals had created some fairly strong odors.
The Ohio Department of Health published the results of surveys conducted within its East Palestine Health Assessment Clinic, also including the door-to-door visits by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, just four weeks in the wake of the chemical disaster filtered through the atmosphere of the town.
The results exposed that well over half of the 168 After Chemical Exposure (ACE) community surveys highlighted some combination of headaches, anxiety, coughing, fatigue, and irritated skin in the wake of the event.
