I’ve mentioned that water pollution is one of my main envirowhacko concerns. It’s really the only thing that I’m personally concerned about regarding pollution by humans. The Ohio Palestine fire is an ugly mess, but people being afraid to drink the tap water today is the least of my concerns — today.
It is my understanding that the EPA claimed that Ohio didn’t qualify for assistance regarding this matter.
Then the most evil man in the world — Donald J. Trump decided to visit and the Biden geniuses changed their mind.
The problem with the water may not be as bad as we think, which is great news, but if the problem exists, it will NOT MANIFEST FOR MONTHS OR YEARS. Some iridescent, wavelength thick oil stains on the surface of water are a clue that foreign chemistry does exist on the surface of the ground, but there has been insufficient time to penetrate to the ground water as of yet. The great thing about oils is that they are carbon chains and bacteria, eat it.
Oil is BUG FOOD.
Oil literally kills fish when spilled in the ocean. Not because it makes them slippery as the left believes, but because bacteria go crazy eating the oil and reducing oxygen levels in the water to the point where larger fish organisms cannot survive.
Basically, even the oil film is not scary. The chemistry attached to the carbon chains of the oil film IS. Imagine benzine or whatever chemical sidegroups were formed on a standard carbon-hydrogen chain. Chemistry is by far my weakest science, but it isn’t hard to understand that such things can happen.
Whatever is left after the fire, may consist of chemistries that do not break down by bacterial metabolic processes. The potential for long term leaching through the ground into the subsurface water is real and with no understanding or study, may be incredibly dangerous. We have the ability to know such answers but the useless EPA, not treating this as a potential large scale brown-field situation and gathering whatever information we can, is incomprehensibly negligent.
Safer train car movement seems like the obvious answer to future issues, but ignoring the problem is not. At this point, I wish it had happened in Martha’s vineyard.
the Air Vent 
Major disaster event
FEMA: “Sorry, this is not in our purview”
Yeah, when was the last time a federal bureaucrat said that……
Going to be great campaign fodder comparing democrats helping Americans vs paying off corrupt Ukraines.
Seems like such a nice place.
Don’t worry about the giant black cloud. Nothing to aee here folks.
FWIW
“East Palestine, Ohio train wreck: It’s the dioxin”
https://planetwavesfm.substack.com/p/palestine-ohio-train-wreck-its-the?utm_source=direct&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
As an aside to this – some years ago we had a beat up on the hazard of dioxin from sugar cane farming chemicals “wrecking the Great Barrier Reef – yet again”. Jennifer Marohasy was the scientific officer for Canegrowers and found that there are naturally produced dioxins which muddled that argument. IIRC she offered to provide a fat sample for testing but was told she was not fat enough to provide a good sample
Dioxin.
You nailed it.
The combustion of vinyl chloride can lead to the formation of dioxins. Dioxins are a group of compounds that are persistent environmental pollutants known to bioaccumulate in animals and humans.