Independent safety regulators on Tuesday criticized decisions made by Norfolk Southern Railway, which is led by CEO Alan Shaw, following the February 2023 derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio, a community that continues to suffer the environmental impacts of the company’s unnecessary burn off of those hazardous materials.
“The damage caused by Norfolk Southern’s gross negligence is immeasurable,” said Misti Allison, who lives with her family about a mile from the derailment site. “Alan Shaw has repeatedly said that Norfolk Southern will ‘make it right.’ But who determines what is right in a situation like this?”
The five-member National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on Tuesday unanimously adopted a report on its investigation into the derailment that includes several recommendations and findings that are particularly damning for Norfolk Southern.
Most noteworthy, NTSB investigators found that the post-derailment decision by the local incident commander to conduct a vent and burn of the contents of the tank cars carrying toxic vinyl chloride monomer was based on incomplete and misleading information provided by Norfolk Southern officials and contractors.
Paul Stancil, an NTSB hazardous materials investigator, told the board that the vent and burn procedure was unnecessary because there was no evidence at the scene indicating an uncontrolled explosion was imminent.
In fact, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) says that a vent and burn procedure should be a last resort, used only when a tank car is about to fail. Norfolk Southern had rejected three other removal methods and began planning for a vent and burn shortly after the derailment, according to NTSB investigators, who deemed it unnecessary.
That chemical burn off continues to impact the community.
Ted Schettler, science director at the Science and Environment Health Network (SEHN), told Transportation Today that the vent and burn released numerous contaminants into the air, soil, and water as a result of both the burning of vinyl chloride and the other various chemicals released when the cars carrying them ruptured.
“Contamination to a complex mixture of hazardous compounds was widespread initially; soil and sediments away from the area that was excavated and hauled away are likely to remain contaminated, explaining why some residents continued to experience symptoms when they returned home even months later,” Schettler said.
He said this also explains why oily sheens continue to appear when sediments in the affected creeks are disturbed.
“Underground plumes of the spilled chemicals that are mobile in water are likely to be migrating and may well get into private drinking water wells, so they will need to be monitored for some time,” said Schettler.
The impacts of this, he added, include physical symptoms like skin rashes; eye, ear, nose, and throat irritation; coughs and wheezing; headaches; confusion; and nausea. Many of these symptoms continued in people who did not move away even months later, he said.
“There are cases of new-onset asthma,” said Schettler, noting that an ongoing survey among residents being conducted by the University of Kentucky reports many people have persistent new symptoms that they did not have prior to the event, including respiratory, neurological, skin rashes, and nausea, as well as reports of persistent stress and PTSD-like symptoms.
“Many say that East Palestine, Ohio, experienced the largest chemical disaster in United States history,” Allison said in an interview. “And the long-term health effects these chemicals are going to have on residents like my family, not to mention the first responders who inhaled the toxic smoke for hours without knowing the deadly chemicals they were breathing, is still widely unknown.”
Nearly 1.5 years after the derailment and chemical burn, site remediation continues with no end in sight, she said, noting that Norfolk Southern and other agencies continue to monitor groundwater, post-rain sediment sampling at area waterways, and sampling of the village’s public drinking water system.
To date, said Allison, nearly 72 million gallons of contaminated water and 180 million tons of contaminated soil have been transported offsite.
Schettler says that the long-term impacts are difficult to predict.
“As for long-term health effects, there really should be a registry established as was done after the World Trade Center disaster so that people can be followed over time and illnesses identified,” he said, “even among those who move away.”
Without such a systematic method, many people will be lost to follow up, he added.
“Yes, of course Norfolk Southern is responsible and their responsibility is long term,” Schettler said.
Darcy Freedman, a professor and director of the Mary Ann Swetland Center for Environmental Health at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said that most of the publicly available data are on environmental measures of contaminants that might be found within the air, water, plant tissue, soil, and sediment following the train derailment and controlled burn.
“While there is a lot of publicly available data, there are gaps in the measurement approach (e.g., placement of monitors, inconsistent measurements at different times and places, etc.) that limit interpretation of findings,” she said.
“Additionally, we do not know the concentration and duration of exposure among residents to any of the potential contaminants because of the survey data collection approach used to examine human health impacts,” Freedman added.
Allison also pointed out that in East Palestine, the real danger lies not just in the soil, but in the refusal to openly address the potential dangers of these harmful chemicals.
“Community health must not be compromised for the sake of avoiding political discomfort,” she said. “To downplay the dangers of the continued cleanup in East Palestine and not being fully transparent with any vinyl chloride detection levels is to gamble recklessly with public health — residents deserve transparency and proactive protection, not silence and secrecy.”
NTSB also noted blameworthy conduct by Norfolk Southern, particularly with how company executives interfered with its investigation of the derailment.
“I am deeply troubled by how Norfolk Southern conducted this investigation,” including delaying or not providing information,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy during yesterday’s board meeting, calling the company’s actions during the investigation “unprecedented and reprehensible.”
NSC delayed or failed to provide critical information multiple times and only provided that information with threat of subpoena on two separate occasions, Homendy said.
NSC hired a private contractor to test off-the-shelf vinyl chloride that was not taken from the derailment site, and then tried to submit that data as evidence in the official docket four separate times, according to Homendy. The company then sent the data directly to the five NTSB board members and demanded that they override their lead investigator to direct him to enter the data in the official docket, although the company had been told repeatedly it violated regulations.
Furthermore, Homendy said a Norfolk Southern senior executive, during an in-person meeting, indicated that they hoped the NTSB would “put to rest the ‘rumor’ that Norfolk Southern made the decisions to vent and burn to move trains.”
“That is not only unethical and inappropriate,” Homendy said, “but defending an entity’s decision-making is not our role.”
Homendy said the exchange during the meeting ended with what was perceived by NTSB attendees as a threat, that Norfolk Southern would use every opportunity to vigorously defend its decision-making in media and hearings going forward.
Homendy also said that, unfortunately, some have sought to minimize the wide-ranging impacts of this derailment by pointing to the fact that there were no fatalities or injuries.
“For this, we are certainly grateful, but the absence of a fatality or injury doesn’t mean the presence of safety,” said Homendy. “Our agency doesn’t wait for death or injury to occur. Instead, we objectively analyze the facts and evidence to make recommendations that, if implemented, will ensure this never happens again. Thanks to the hard work of our world-class investigators, we now have a roadmap to do just that.”
Shaw at Norfolk Southern said recently that he hopes the industry can improve the way vent and burn decisions are made to help improve rail safety. And the company said on Friday that it plans to lead an industry-wide effort toward reaching that goal by forming a vent and burn working group.
“When a vent and burn procedure is being considered, the health and safety of surrounding communities and emergency responders is top priority,” Shaw said.
Report specifics
In its report, NTSB determined that the probable cause of the Norfolk Southern train derailment was the failure of a wheel bearing that overheated and caused the axle to separate, derailing the train and leading to a post-derailment fire that released the hazardous materials.
Also contributing to the severity of the hazardous materials release were the failure of Norfolk Southern and its contractors to communicate relevant expertise and dissenting opinions to the incident commander, and the inaccurate representation by Norfolk Southern and its contractors that the tank cars were at risk of catastrophic failure from a polymerization reaction, which created unwarranted urgency and led to the unnecessary decision to vent and burn the five derailed vinyl chloride monomer tank cars, the report says.
Norfolk Southern also delayed transmitting information about the train and what it was hauling to emergency responders, another contributing factor to their exposure, and the public’s, to post-derailment hazards, according to the report.
“This report shows that Norfolk Southern’s greed and neglect for public safety is the reason this derailment happened, and the people of East Palestine have suffered the consequences,” U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said. “The NTSB made crystal clear what we have been saying for over a year — stronger rail safety regulations are needed immediately.”
“Norfolk Southern’s information-sharing failure [also] placed Pennsylvania first responders in needless, irresponsible danger,” said U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA). The derailment occurred near the Ohio-Pennsylvania line.
As a result of its investigation, the NTSB’s report includes new safety recommendations for not only Norfolk Southern, but for the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, the FRA, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the State of Ohio, the Association of American Railroads, Columbiana County Emergency Management Agency, the Chlorine Institute, the International Association of Fire Chiefs, the International Association of Fire Fighters, the American Chemistry Council, Oxy Vinyls LP, and the National Volunteer Fire Council.
For example, NTSB recommended that Norfolk Southern develop a policy to ensure that expertise communicated to its on-scene representatives and contractors is shared with the full incident command. It also recommended that Norfolk Southern adopt policies to ensure that its emergency response contractors keep detailed records of information used to make decisions involving hazardous materials, and that it shares this information with shippers, relevant chemical associations, and other entities that provide guidance on such materials.
Additionally, Norfolk Southern should review and revise its procedures to immediately provide emergency responders with an accurate copy of the train consist — which generally refers to the contents of a train, including the position of locomotives and cars, as well as both non-hazardous and hazardous freight within those cars — upon becoming aware of an accident, recommended NTSB.
The NTSB will publish the final report on ntsb.gov in about two to four weeks. The final report includes factual information, analysis, and conclusions, as well as any changes voted on and adopted by the board.
Norfolk Southern explained in a statement that the “only motivation” for Norfolk Southern and its contractors recommending the vent and burn to the unified command was the health and safety of the community and first responders, and that after carefully considering all alternatives, decided it was “the only option.”
Norfolk Southern countered other findings in the NTSB report, and said both the company and its contractors received conflicting information from Oxy Vinyls’ personnel as to whether polymerization was or could be occurring. And Oxy Vinyls’ safety data sheet was clear that polymerization was possible in the circumstances observed at the derailment.
Norfolk Southern also doesn’t agree with the NTSB conclusion that it “withheld” Oxy Vinyls’ views from the unified command.
“We will move quickly to compare the NTSB’s recommendations to our current protocols and will implement those that advance our safety culture,” said the company.
Independent safety regulators on Tuesday criticized decisions made by Norfolk Southern Railway, which is led by CEO Alan Shaw, following the February 2023 derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio, a community that continues to suffer the environmental impacts of the company’s unnecessary burn off of those hazardous materials.
“The damage caused by Norfolk Southern’s gross negligence is immeasurable,” said Misti Allison, who lives with her family about a mile from the derailment site. “Alan Shaw has repeatedly said that Norfolk Southern will ‘make it right.’ But who determines what is right in a situation like this?”
The five-member National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on Tuesday unanimously adopted a report on its investigation into the derailment that includes several recommendations and findings that are particularly damning for Norfolk Southern.
Most noteworthy, NTSB investigators found that the post-derailment decision by the local incident commander to conduct a vent and burn of the contents of the tank cars carrying toxic vinyl chloride monomer was based on incomplete and misleading information provided by Norfolk Southern officials and contractors.
Paul Stancil, an NTSB hazardous materials investigator, told the board that the vent and burn procedure was unnecessary because there was no evidence at the scene indicating an uncontrolled explosion was imminent.
In fact, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) says that a vent and burn procedure should be a last resort, used only when a tank car is about to fail. Norfolk Southern had rejected three other removal methods and began planning for a vent and burn shortly after the derailment, according to NTSB investigators, who deemed it unnecessary.
That chemical burn off continues to impact the community.
Ted Schettler, science director at the Science and Environment Health Network (SEHN), told Transportation Today that the vent and burn released numerous contaminants into the air, soil, and water as a result of both the burning of vinyl chloride and the other various chemicals released when the cars carrying them ruptured.
“Contamination to a complex mixture of hazardous compounds was widespread initially; soil and sediments away from the area that was excavated and hauled away are likely to remain contaminated, explaining why some residents continued to experience symptoms when they returned home even months later,” Schettler said.
He said this also explains why oily sheens continue to appear when sediments in the affected creeks are disturbed.
“Underground plumes of the spilled chemicals that are mobile in water are likely to be migrating and may well get into private drinking water wells, so they will need to be monitored for some time,” said Schettler.
The impacts of this, he added, include physical symptoms like skin rashes; eye, ear, nose, and throat irritation; coughs and wheezing; headaches; confusion; and nausea. Many of these symptoms continued in people who did not move away even months later, he said.
“There are cases of new-onset asthma,” said Schettler, noting that an ongoing survey among residents being conducted by the University of Kentucky reports many people have persistent new symptoms that they did not have prior to the event, including respiratory, neurological, skin rashes, and nausea, as well as reports of persistent stress and PTSD-like symptoms.
“Many say that East Palestine, Ohio, experienced the largest chemical disaster in United States history,” Allison said in an interview. “And the long-term health effects these chemicals are going to have on residents like my family, not to mention the first responders who inhaled the toxic smoke for hours without knowing the deadly chemicals they were breathing, is still widely unknown.”
Nearly 1.5 years after the derailment and chemical burn, site remediation continues with no end in sight, she said, noting that Norfolk Southern and other agencies continue to monitor groundwater, post-rain sediment sampling at area waterways, and sampling of the village’s public drinking water system.
To date, said Allison, nearly 72 million gallons of contaminated water and 180 million tons of contaminated soil have been transported offsite.
Schettler says that the long-term impacts are difficult to predict.
“As for long-term health effects, there really should be a registry established as was done after the World Trade Center disaster so that people can be followed over time and illnesses identified,” he said, “even among those who move away.”
Without such a systematic method, many people will be lost to follow up, he added.
“Yes, of course Norfolk Southern is responsible and their responsibility is long term,” Schettler said.
Darcy Freedman, a professor and director of the Mary Ann Swetland Center for Environmental Health at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said that most of the publicly available data are on environmental measures of contaminants that might be found within the air, water, plant tissue, soil, and sediment following the train derailment and controlled burn.
“While there is a lot of publicly available data, there are gaps in the measurement approach (e.g., placement of monitors, inconsistent measurements at different times and places, etc.) that limit interpretation of findings,” she said.
“Additionally, we do not know the concentration and duration of exposure among residents to any of the potential contaminants because of the survey data collection approach used to examine human health impacts,” Freedman added.
Allison also pointed out that in East Palestine, the real danger lies not just in the soil, but in the refusal to openly address the potential dangers of these harmful chemicals.
“Community health must not be compromised for the sake of avoiding political discomfort,” she said. “To downplay the dangers of the continued cleanup in East Palestine and not being fully transparent with any vinyl chloride detection levels is to gamble recklessly with public health — residents deserve transparency and proactive protection, not silence and secrecy.”
NTSB also noted blameworthy conduct by Norfolk Southern, particularly with how company executives interfered with its investigation of the derailment.
“I am deeply troubled by how Norfolk Southern conducted this investigation,” including delaying or not providing information,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy during yesterday’s board meeting, calling the company’s actions during the investigation “unprecedented and reprehensible.”
NSC delayed or failed to provide critical information multiple times and only provided that information with threat of subpoena on two separate occasions, Homendy said.
NSC hired a private contractor to test off-the-shelf vinyl chloride that was not taken from the derailment site, and then tried to submit that data as evidence in the official docket four separate times, according to Homendy. The company then sent the data directly to the five NTSB board members and demanded that they override their lead investigator to direct him to enter the data in the official docket, although the company had been told repeatedly it violated regulations.
Furthermore, Homendy said a Norfolk Southern senior executive, during an in-person meeting, indicated that they hoped the NTSB would “put to rest the ‘rumor’ that Norfolk Southern made the decisions to vent and burn to move trains.”
“That is not only unethical and inappropriate,” Homendy said, “but defending an entity’s decision-making is not our role.”
Homendy said the exchange during the meeting ended with what was perceived by NTSB attendees as a threat, that Norfolk Southern would use every opportunity to vigorously defend its decision-making in media and hearings going forward.
Homendy also said that, unfortunately, some have sought to minimize the wide-ranging impacts of this derailment by pointing to the fact that there were no fatalities or injuries.
“For this, we are certainly grateful, but the absence of a fatality or injury doesn’t mean the presence of safety,” said Homendy. “Our agency doesn’t wait for death or injury to occur. Instead, we objectively analyze the facts and evidence to make recommendations that, if implemented, will ensure this never happens again. Thanks to the hard work of our world-class investigators, we now have a roadmap to do just that.”
Shaw at Norfolk Southern said recently that he hopes the industry can improve the way vent and burn decisions are made to help improve rail safety. And the company said on Friday that it plans to lead an industry-wide effort toward reaching that goal by forming a vent and burn working group.
“When a vent and burn procedure is being considered, the health and safety of surrounding communities and emergency responders is top priority,” Shaw said.
Report specifics
In its report, NTSB determined that the probable cause of the Norfolk Southern train derailment was the failure of a wheel bearing that overheated and caused the axle to separate, derailing the train and leading to a post-derailment fire that released the hazardous materials.
Also contributing to the severity of the hazardous materials release were the failure of Norfolk Southern and its contractors to communicate relevant expertise and dissenting opinions to the incident commander, and the inaccurate representation by Norfolk Southern and its contractors that the tank cars were at risk of catastrophic failure from a polymerization reaction, which created unwarranted urgency and led to the unnecessary decision to vent and burn the five derailed vinyl chloride monomer tank cars, the report says.
Norfolk Southern also delayed transmitting information about the train and what it was hauling to emergency responders, another contributing factor to their exposure, and the public’s, to post-derailment hazards, according to the report.
“This report shows that Norfolk Southern’s greed and neglect for public safety is the reason this derailment happened, and the people of East Palestine have suffered the consequences,” U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said. “The NTSB made crystal clear what we have been saying for over a year — stronger rail safety regulations are needed immediately.”
“Norfolk Southern’s information-sharing failure [also] placed Pennsylvania first responders in needless, irresponsible danger,” said U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA). The derailment occurred near the Ohio-Pennsylvania line.
As a result of its investigation, the NTSB’s report includes new safety recommendations for not only Norfolk Southern, but for the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, the FRA, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the State of Ohio, the Association of American Railroads, Columbiana County Emergency Management Agency, the Chlorine Institute, the International Association of Fire Chiefs, the International Association of Fire Fighters, the American Chemistry Council, Oxy Vinyls LP, and the National Volunteer Fire Council.
For example, NTSB recommended that Norfolk Southern develop a policy to ensure that expertise communicated to its on-scene representatives and contractors is shared with the full incident command. It also recommended that Norfolk Southern adopt policies to ensure that its emergency response contractors keep detailed records of information used to make decisions involving hazardous materials, and that it shares this information with shippers, relevant chemical associations, and other entities that provide guidance on such materials.
Additionally, Norfolk Southern should review and revise its procedures to immediately provide emergency responders with an accurate copy of the train consist — which generally refers to the contents of a train, including the position of locomotives and cars, as well as both non-hazardous and hazardous freight within those cars — upon becoming aware of an accident, recommended NTSB.
The NTSB will publish the final report on ntsb.gov in about two to four weeks. The final report includes factual information, analysis, and conclusions, as well as any changes voted on and adopted by the board.
Norfolk Southern explained in a statement that the “only motivation” for Norfolk Southern and its contractors recommending the vent and burn to the unified command was the health and safety of the community and first responders, and that after carefully considering all alternatives, decided it was “the only option.”
Norfolk Southern countered other findings in the NTSB report, and said both the company and its contractors received conflicting information from Oxy Vinyls’ personnel as to whether polymerization was or could be occurring. And Oxy Vinyls’ safety data sheet was clear that polymerization was possible in the circumstances observed at the derailment.
Norfolk Southern also doesn’t agree with the NTSB conclusion that it “withheld” Oxy Vinyls’ views from the unified command.
“We will move quickly to compare the NTSB’s recommendations to our current protocols and will implement those that advance our safety culture,” said the company.