A private medical center in the state of Ohio has reported that many of its patients share similar symptoms including a burning sensation when breathing, skin rashes or general weakness, all following the derailment of a train carrying chemicals.
This has been reported by workers at the Quick Med Urgent Carte in Columbiana, who have detailed that they are seeing «more and more people» coming from East Palestine — the town where the train derailed on February 3 — and complaining that they are not feeling well, reported ‘The Hill’.
They all share symptoms such as a burning sensation when breathing, skin rashes or general weakness. Moreover, when they start to feel better and are discharged, they soon return to the hospital because they feel unwell again.
«It could be a lot of things, but if you leave the house and ‘the symptoms’ get better, and you come back and it comes back, I don’t think it’s allergies and I don’t think it’s a cold,» said Quick Med spokeswoman Deb Weese, noting that she believes these symptoms are related to what the people in East Palestine are inhaling.
She said the burning sensation when breathing could be a form of chemical bronchitis, urging anyone suffering similar symptoms to seek treatment.
«Let’s face it, if it comes to it, it could be something in the future from all these chemicals they’re breathing in that we don’t know about, so it’s important that they document all their symptoms,» Weese told the newspaper.
U.S. health authorities and residents of the Ohio city of East Palestine are in a period of serious uncertainty as they await the long-term effects of the Feb. 3 derailment of a freight train carrying hazardous chemicals that forced the temporary evacuation of the town, whose citizens are demanding a full investigation of what happened before they can resume their normal lives.
Part of this investigation concerns the train itself, operated by Norfolk Southern. Company employees, on condition of anonymity, revealed this week to the CBS network that the vehicle had experienced mechanical failures two days before the derailment and that it was carrying a clearly excessive load: 151 cars, including some 20 with harmful elements, for a total weight of some 18,000 tons. So far, the US National Transportation Safety Board has found «preliminary indications of mechanical problems in one of the axles», pending further information.
A total of 38 of these cars ended up off the track, of which at least eleven contained butyl acrylate and, above all, vinyl chloride gas, used in the manufacture of plastics and potentially carcinogenic. The fire triggered by the derailment — accompanied by an explosion that sent a fireball almost a kilometer high — forced the immediate evacuation of a good part of the 4,700 residents of East Palestine due to the release of the gas in the derailed cars and in the other nine cars with toxic substances that were still on the track.
