Editor's Note from March 2023 Networker

Editor’s Note

For her DeSmog piece, “Following Ohio Derailment, Concerns Arise Over Expansion of Rail and Pipeline Transport of Hazardous Material,” the climate journalist Dana Drugmand turned to SEHN’s Carolyn Raffensperger and Ted Schettler to flesh out the regulatory and health and safety aspects of the horrific February 3, 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The piece highlights the commonalities between the derailment of the train which carried hazardous chemicals, including vinyl chloride, and the 2020 rupture of a pipeline carrying carbon dioxide (CO2) in Satartia, Mississippi.

While these two disasters involved different hazardous substances and modes of transport, they have one thing in common: both were under the purview of the same federal agency, the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA). Experts are now saying that these accidents demonstrate the consequences of inadequate oversight and insufficient safety regulations governing hazardous material transportation.

Carolyn and Ted provide this legal and medical expert insight in hopes of moving us from a country with a perilously inadequate regulatory system toward one in which the sight of a pipeline or the sound of a train’s whistle no longer evokes fear. SEHN’s Sandra Steingraber and Peter Montague prepared complementary pieces for this newsletter which help us understand the historical and political context in which we arrived at this day, with its reality of 106 train derailments involving release of hazardous chemicals since 2015. 

And like so many other concerns in recent years, we can’t look to Canada for a better model: little has changed in its regulatory system since the 2013 train derailment and explosion of six million liters of oil in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, which killed 47 people.

I’m likely not alone in having mixed and conflicting impressions about trains and tracks. Many of us seek out any of the limited passenger rail routes that may work for us—perhaps even knowing the majority of those tracks are shared with industrial freight—and dream of a truly modern, low-carbon rail system by which we can stay out of the skies and move ourselves around efficiently on the ground. On the other hand, we can’t possibly accept the status quo of our toxic chemicals-based economy which puts those materials along the tracks, and the industry influence on policy that results in catastrophes like that which is still unfolding in East Palestine, Ohio. 

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration says, on its web page last updated March 8, 2023, “Rail transportation of hazardous materials in the United States is recognized to be the safest land-based method of moving large quantities of chemicals over long distances.” If that's the case, then it’s clear these are not materials that should be transported by land and their production and use, in any case, must be strictly limited. 

Thank you for reading this month’s articles and advocating for turning this intolerable situation around. 

Carmi Orenstein, MPH
CHPNY Program Director, SEHN