The municipal building in tiny Darlington Township, Pennsylvania, was buzzing with activity on Wednesday afternoon as a stream of locals arrived seeking information on health screenings, chemical exposures and well testing.
Darlington, home to about 1,800 people, sits just over the border from East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a catastrophic train derailment and controlled burn of toxic chemicals that sent black smoke billowing over the area for days in early February. Residents here say the wind blew acrid smoke into their homes and coated their cars with a fine ash. State and federal officials gave East Palestine residents the all-clear to return to their homes days later.
But residents in both places are now wondering whether their water is safe to drink and their air safe to breathe. The characteristic floral, fruity odor of butyl acrylate still permeates some homes and wafts up from some of the impacted streams that run through the town. Some say they’re experiencing symptoms – cough, headaches, rashes, watering eyes and dripping noses – that might be related to a chemical exposure.
Government-run community resource centers and health clinics have opened in East Palestine and Darlington to answer residents’ questions and connect them to any care they might need. More than 140 people have come to the clinic in East Palestine since it first opened on February 21, according to the Ohio Department of Health. The Darlington center opened February 28, and more than 200 people visited in its first two days, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
Still, some residents are skeptical of the clinics, and the response overall. While many residents who live near the derailment site are following the testing for chemicals in the air and water, what they really want to know is whether they’ve had chemicals from the accident in their bodies, and whether those chemicals have impacted their health.
They’re swapping information online, and seeking out blood tests they hope will identify potential problems. Some are seeking out medical care so there’s a record of their symptoms.
On the advice of a lawyer, Ron Book and his wife came to the East Palestine Health Assessment Clinic on Wednesday afternoon to have their illnesses documented. Book says since the derailment, his nose has been running constantly. He has a sore throat, and he feels stuffy.
“It’s like I have a cold, but I don’t have a cold,” he said.
Book said he saw a doctor who took his vitals and advised him to keep up with the regular blood work that he needs for his ongoing treatment for prostate cancer. He was inside for about 45 minutes, and said the experience was helpful, and about what he expected.
“They can’t heal you,” Book says, “because nobody knows about this chemical.”
Government clinics open, health study underway
At the Darlington center, tables were staffed with experts to answer questions about the chemicals involved in the train derailment, free well and air testing for residents, and potential impacts to area farms.
There were pamphlets on how to manage stress following a disaster and mental health counselors, as well as Zuko, a 3-year-old Great Dane therapy dog.
Residents are also invited to take a nine-page questionnaire to contribute data to a newly launched Assessment of Chemical Exposure, or ACE, study, which is being conducted by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Health investigators can use their data to inform a study into the health effects associated with the chemical exposures after the derailment.
People could see a doctor, or get referrals for a primary care physician.
“I think approximately 40% of people sought some sort of clinical evaluation,” said Nate Wardle, who is the special response project manager for the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
Wardle said when they opened the clinic, they weren’t sure what to expect – whether residents would be angry that it took more than three weeks to get them these services. So far, he said, people have been grateful and eager to get the help.
Jim Denes, who is 71, came to the health clinic in Darlington Township on Wednesday. He said he lives less than 2 miles from the accident site. On Friday of last week, Denes said he felt awful.
“I was just miserable. I was trying to cough up stuff, I couldn’t,” Denes said. “My eyes were all runny and watery.”
He said he took a Covid-19 test, but it was negative.
Denes said he’s extremely tired and had to drag himself to the clinic, but he’s glad he did. The doctor he saw diagnosed him with bronchitis and prescribed an antibiotic. The clinic was a lot closer than his regular doctor in Ellwood City, and he was able to walk in and be seen without a wait.
Denes said the doctor told him he couldn’t say whether it was related to the chemicals that were spilled or not.
Some resident seek out their own testing
Some residents said they have no interest in going to government-run health clinics.
“I honestly, at this point, don’t know who’s working with who and I really just don’t trust anything that has to do with the government right now,” said Giovanni Irizarry, whose family lives within a mile of the train derailment site.
In the evening hours of February 3, his wife Ashley Irizarry was driving to work when she noticed she could see thick black smoke hanging in the air, even though it was dark. Eventually, she saw the raging fire along the railroad tracks.
That night, Ashley had a red rash on her cheeks, her eyes were burning and red and a metallic chemical smell had burned her nose and throat. On Saturday, Giovanni said, his lips burned like he’d had scalding hot soup. Giovanni’s mother, who was living with them, developed a cough so severe she couldn’t catch her breath. The Irizarrys evacuated on Sunday to Boardman, Ohio, about 15 miles away.
They returned home on Saturday, February 11, in anticipation of school restarting on Monday.
As soon as they got close to town, Giovanni said, “I immediately felt my lips like start that burning sensation.”
He and his mom started coughing. His wife and kids developed debilitating and unrelenting headaches. After the kids came home from school on Monday, both started vomiting.
Ashley says she has taken the family to their primary care doctor, an urgent care and the hospital.
“It was not getting better,” she said.
Medical records reviewed by CNN show Ashley was prescribed a steroid and given a chest X-ray due to “toxic effects of gas exposure.” Her son was also diagnosed with chemical exposure.
When the doctors looked into her nose and throat they told her ” ‘Your mucous membranes are all pale. Like they were burned,’ but they didn’t know what to do at this time,” Ashley said in an interview with CNN on Wednesday.
On public Facebook groups, residents are sharing names of providers who will order blood testing for chemical exposures, which isn’t something either of the government-run clinics is doing currently. Some have even tried to do their own research to try to identify the medical codes needed to order tests for specific chemicals in the blood from large labs.
Instead of going to the government health clinic, on Wednesday, Ashley went to see their chiropractor, Richard Tsai, who has been ordering certain blood tests for existing patients who think they have having health problems connected to chemical exposures from the derailment.
Tsai’s practice, Blackhawk Chiropractic, is right next door to the Darlington Township community resource center and clinic that was opened by the Pennsylvania Department of Health and other state agencies this week.
The tests Tsai orders are general and standard in medical care – a test called a complete blood count, which measures levels of red cells, white cells, and clotting factors in the blood; and a test called a basic metabolic panel, which measures blood sugar, electrolytes, and kidney function. If his patients ask for it, he also orders a more specialized test that measure exposure to the chemical benzene. In the past two days, he estimates about 15 patients have asked him for blood testing.
Tsai, who lives in East Palestine, says he’s been frustrated by the government’s response.
“We shouldn’t be having to do this,” Tsai said, in an interview with CNN on Wednesday.
“Why are people having to figure this out on Facebook? These people need to know where to go and what’s available.”
Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, director of the Ohio Department of Health, pushed back against the idea that the government wasn’t giving people enough information. He said that during the course of the medical assessment at the health clinic, the clinic physician might make recommendations for further testing, but that would be done by the person’s regular doctor.
If people don’t have a doctor that they see regularly, Vanderhoff said they are trying to help residents find one.
Vanderhoff said it would be important for the primary care providers to continue to monitor changes in a patient’s overall health.
“Because when we look at the chemicals involved, especially the primary chemical vinyl chloride, there is simply not a blood test that we can do or a urine test that we can do that would say ‘Aha! You had an exposure,’ ” Vanderhoff said. “That would be great, but that’s just not the case.”
Tsai, who lives in East Palestine, said that he’s legally able to order medical tests, so he does, within limits. “Why wouldn’t you do that?” he said.
Why testing is difficult
Dr. Erin Haynes, the chairperson of the department of epidemiology and environmental health at the University of Kentucky, says she thinks it’s sound for residents to seek out common blood tests.
In an email to CNN, Haynes said in addition to a complete blood count and basic metabolic panel she would add a liver function test, since vinyl chloride, one chemical that was on the train, can damage the liver.
But Haynes says trying to test for specific chemicals may be a step too far.
“Testing for chemical exposure at this point is a difficult,” says Haynes, who has helped impacted communities investigate environmental exposures. “The high levels are now gone, and we aren’t exactly sure what to measure in blood or urine since we don’t know what chemicals formed during the fire. There are suspects, but not clear answers yet.”
Haynes said it would be ideal to collect blood and urine samples now, but store them for later testing, but this would be difficult for a local clinic to do.
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Overall, Haynes says the government’s response to chemical spills like this one leaves something to be desired.
“The community is in dire need of an organized and coordinated health monitoring study that includes exposure assessment,” said Haynes, who hopes to bring such a study to the area soon.
Down the road, she says, there’s still a lot to learn about the health impacts of environmental exposures to toxins.
“We also need more research on what these chemicals do and methods for rapid testing,” Haynes said. “Communities with railroad must know what is moving through their community, when and how much. They also must receive training on how to safely respond when a disaster occurs.”
Kyla Russell contributed to this report
