Steven Donziger on the East Palestine Chemical Disaster.

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 The human rights and environmental lawyer who Chevron tried to put under a jail shows us why big polluting companies want him off the board:

Earlier this month, a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in eastern Ohio, exploding into flames and unleashing a spume of chemical smoke on the small town of East Palestine. The train’s freight included vinyl chloride, a chemical known to cause liver cancer and other sicknesses.

In response, government and railway officials decided to “burn off” the vinyl chloride – effectively dumping 1.1m lbs of the chemical into the local community, according to a new lawsuit. Officials said that they did so to avert the vinyl chloride from exploding; in contrast, an attorney for the lawsuit has said that the decision was cheap, unsafe, and more interested in restoring train service and appeasing railway shareholders than protecting local residents.

East Palestine residents are reporting headaches, sore throats, and burning eyes; dead pets and chickens; and thousands of fish corpses in nearby waterways. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has said that approximately 3,500 fish, of 12 different species, died across 7.5 miles.

In other words, Norfolk Southern’s “controlled burn” may have caused a mushroom cloud of poison to spread over eastern Ohio. The situation demands immediate action from President Biden. Without it, thousands of people – including children and the elderly – and animals will be at continued risk of premature death. Biden must declare a state of emergency and create an independent taskforce to take over the remediation of this eco-catastrophe.

Norfolk Southern “basically nuked a town with chemicals” to “get a railroad open”, a former hazmat technician told a local news outlet. It certainly seems like a company with a $55bn market cap chose to sacrifice the health of thousands of people to keep its profits flowing.


Places like Flint and New Orleans were only the beginning. American cities are basically labs for corporations to conduct experiments on, and they have enough politicians in their pocket to avoid anything close to "justice":



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