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Nov 18, 2023

Explainer: What to Know About the Ohio Train Derailment

Published on By What started out as a seemingly commonplace train derailment

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What started out as a seemingly commonplace train derailment near the border of Ohio and Pennsylvania in early February escalated into a serious threat to more than 4,000 people in the immediate area. Millions of people living in the vicinity of the derailment are also watching this situation closely as chemicals have made their way into the air and waterways.

Vinyl chloride, which was being transported on a number of the 150 train cars owned by Norfolk Southern, is a key cause for concern in the aftermath of the derailment. The chemical is a known carcinogen, and is dangerous when released into the environment.

In this piece, we’re providing a timeline, an explainer on the chemicals being carried by the train, the impact zone of the derailment and release of said chemicals, and the other basics you need to know.

The company that owns the train, Norfolk Southern, released a document detailing the train cars and what each carried, as well as whether or not it was damaged and/or derailed. Here are the highlights:

Aside from dangerous chemicals, the train was carrying things like sheet steel, semolina, cement, malt liquor, and paraffin wax.

According to the CDC, many of these substances are frequently transported across the U.S.; benzene, for example, ranks in the top 20 chemicals by production volume in the country.

Friday, February 3rd: The train, which was heading from Madison, Illinois to Conway, Pennsylvania, was carrying various products from frozen vegetables to industrial chemicals. Near East Palestine, Ohio, just before the Pennsylvania border, 38 of the train's 150 train cars derailed and subsequent fires caused damages to another 12. Additionally, 11 of the derailed train cars carried hazardous material, the most dangerous being vinyl chloride.

The derailment caused a large fire and ominous plumes of smoke over East Palestine, but there were no fatalities or injuries. According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the cause of the derailment is still under investigation.

Saturday, February 4th: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) crews began running air pollution and water runoff tests. They detected contaminated water in two streams, Sulphur Run and Leslie Run.

Sunday, February 5th: The EPA and Norfolk Southern's contractors continued testing, and recovery efforts were underway at the contaminated water sites.

Monday, February 6th: Responders conducted a controlled burn of toxic materials to destroy the remaining vinyl chloride, which posed a threat of explosion and subsequent toxic fumes and shrapnel. Because of this the standing evacuation order was extended to include a larger area. From the Ohio governor's announcement:

"The controlled release process involves the burning of the rail cars’ chemicals, which will release fumes into the air that can be deadly if inhaled. Based on current weather patterns and the expected flow of the smoke and fumes, anyone who remains in the red affected area is facing grave danger of death." – Mike DeWine

Wednesday, February 8th: Just days later, the governor announced that it was safe for residents to return home as air quality tests were coming back clean.

In the last week: Reports have been coming in of people feeling symptoms related to the release of toxic chemicals. Additionally, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, reported that 3,500 fish were found dead in Ohio waterways as a direct result of the spill from the train derailment.

The EPA, however, has screened the air quality inside more than 400 homes, finding levels to be safe. A statement from the regional director of the EPA said that: "Since the fire went out on February 8, EPA air monitoring has not detected any levels of health concern in the community that are attributed to the train derailment."

On Wednesday, the 15th, Norfolk Southern representatives pulled out of a meeting with town officials, causing outrage among residents. The following day, EPA administrator, Michael Regan, visited East Palestine to quell the anger and fears, but residents are still unhappy and skeptical of the testing.

The largest remaining issue is that water quality connected to the Ohio River, which is still being monitored. The governor has recommended only drinking bottled water.

The town of East Palestine is home to just over 4,000 people and the crash happened dangerously close to the city of Pittsburgh, PA. Contamination in the water supply have led to the deaths of thousands of fish and people are now complaining of reactions to the chemical leakage.

Norfolk Southern has set up an Assistance Center and donated over $1 million to help people cover costs of evacuation, as well as conducting extensive testing of air and water quality. The governor is now calling for tighter regulations on rail companies and a number of lawsuits have been filed against Norfolk Southern.

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When the world's biomass—the stuff we’re made of—is tallied up, humans and cattle outweigh wild mammals by a massive margin.

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Even as we understand more about the world we live in, certain aspects of it remain undefined or hard to comprehend.

One such example is in the scale and distribution of Earth's life. What's the ratio of wild to domesticated animals? How much do all of the world's humans weigh?

Until recently, such questions were nearly unanswerable. A new report titled The Global Biomass of Wild Mammals helps shed more light on the composition and scale of life on our planet. The research provides an estimate of the biomass of all mammals, globally—including humans.

Biomass is simply the weight of living things.

In this study, researchers

created rough estimates for four major categories of mammals: humans, domesticated animals, and those that were found in wild terrestrial and marine environments. A further breakdown of mammal groups are found within each category.

To achieve this, they took the estimated number of species from census data and multiplied it with each species’ average body mass.

One component worth pointing out is that animals contribute very different amounts to the world's biomass total. For example, whales significantly outweigh rodents in terms of biomass, even though there are fewer species and populations of whales. The fact that whales are so much larger than rodents means that even smaller populations can contribute a meaningful portion to overall biomass.

Each larger cube above represents 20 million metric tons of carbon, and the entirety of the visualization represents all living mammalian life on Earth.

The paper separates mammals into four distinct categories:

One of the most obvious takeaways from this data is that humans make up one-third of total mammalian biomass.

Perhaps even more strikingly, the animals we’ve domesticated for food, companionship, and labor make up close to 60% of the total weight of Earth's mammals. Domesticated dogs and cats alone equal the total weight of all other wild land mammals combined.

The world's sheep, on their own, weigh as much as all the whales and seals in the ocean. Domesticated buffalo such as the water buffalo, a species commonly found in Asia, combine to have the third largest biomass of all mammals.

Finally, there's one category of mammal that comes way out on top.

The global livestock population has risen along with the human population, and cattle are now the top mammal in the world by weight.

In fact, just the United States’ share of cattle matches the biomass of all wild mammals on Earth.

As the standard of living continues to rise for people around the world, beef consumption has been increasing in many developing countries. Of course, raising cattle is a resource and land intensive operation, and there have been very real impacts on a global scale. For one, cows are a major source of methane emissions. As well, in Brazil, which accounts for around 25% of the world's cattle population, pasture has directly replaced large swaths of rainforest habitat.

At the very bottom of the visualization, dwarfed by humans and domesticated mammals, lies the vast array of wild mammals that live on planet Earth.

It's sobering to see that the biomass of North America's human population alone compares closely with that of all terrestrial wild mammals in the world. This includes plentiful creatures like rats and mice, as well as large mammals like elephants and bears.

Below are the top 10 wild mammalian contributors to biomass in the natural world.

In the ocean, whales and seals are the heavyweight champions. On land, deer, and boar come out on top as they are both heavy and plentiful.

Humans have a complicated relationship with large mammals. We feel a very clear connection to these creatures, and they are often the key figures in conservation efforts. That said, even small populations of humans have wiped out large mammal species in the past.

The news that cattle outweigh wild land animals by a factor of 20:1 is a reminder that human influence is perhaps even more powerful than we think.

The more we’re exposed to nature's full splendor […] the more we might be tempted to imagine that nature is an endless and inexhaustible resource. In reality, the weight of all remaining wild land mammals is less than 10% of humanity's combined weight. – Ron Milo, Professor of Systems Biology

Source: The global biomass of wild mammals

Data notes: To come up with the numbers above, scientists estimated the total biomass of wild mammals on Earth by manually collecting population estimates for 392 land mammal species, which make up about 6% of all wild land mammal species, and using machine learning to infer the global populations of the remaining 94%. Their estimate includes 4,805 wild land mammal species out of approximately 6,400 known and extant wild land mammal species, excluding low-abundance species for which data are scarce.

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