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EAST PALESTINE -- The U.S. The Environmental Protection Agency has responded to published reports accusing the agency of failing to openly share data related to dioxin and furan compounds testing conducted in East Palestine in the wake of last year's Norfolk Southern train derailment and intentional vent and burn of chemicals on the train.
"Recent reporting on this issue is inaccurate and mischaracterizes EPA's response and commitment to transparency," the agency said in a Thursday e-mail.
The accusations were leveled by the Government Accountability Project -- a nonprofit whistleblower group -- and Scott Smith -- the chief sustainability officer for Eco Integrated Technologies, who has been conducting independent environmental testing in the village. Both GAP and Smith maintain that elevated levels of dioxins were found by the EPA during early tests of soil, water and air conducted that were not disclosed. Those tests, they say, were conducted in February 2023 and conflict with the EPA's timeline that reported dioxin testing was performed in March.
The EPA pushed back at those claims, insisting the tests completed in February were publicly disclosed. The February tests, the EPA said, were to detect dioxin in the waste at the site only while soil within and around East Palestine was tested in March.
The EPA also doubled down on its stance that air sampling collected reflected a low likelihood that dioxin was an issue outside of the derailment site.
"Although air monitoring during the fire showed it was unlikely that high levels of dioxin were generated and released into the air, in February testing for dioxin in the heavily contaminated waste at the derailment site was conducted," the EPA said. "EPA started sharing dioxin data from characterized site waste with the public as early as March. This data sharing occurred through many meetings with community members at EPA's welcome center and at community meetings and events. Furthermore, EPA posted this data on its webpage in the spring and has openly discussed this data throughout the response. The dioxin and furan levels that were detected are not unusual for this type of waste."
The EPA added that the agency has "sent this data to several requestors during the past year, including local community groups" and provided a link to a letter sent to Jami Wallace, president of Unity Council for the East Palestine Train Derailment, and Daniel Winston, co-executive director of River Valley Organizing, as "an example of EPA's transparency regarding this information and data." While the letter gives no specific dates of dioxin testing prior to the March soil testing (known as Phase I Soil Sampling in work plans), it does state that it ordered Norfolk Southern "to conduct dioxin and semi-volatile organic compound sampling before any other type of off-site delineation sampling from the derailment."
Phase I Soil Sampling was performed in March and April. The EPA sampled and tested soil at 148 residential, recreational, commercial and agricultural locations - 89 from Ohio and 59 from Pennsylvania. Each location was the site of shallow and deep samples, meaning one at the surface and one below the surface. Seven of those locations were inside the East Palestine City Park.
"In addition to the site-characterization sampling that was conducted in February, testing began for dioxin off-site in residential, commercial and agriculture areas in March. Given the air monitoring that EPA conducted prior to, during and after the vent and burn, EPA had no reason to believe that dioxins posed a threat to the community," the EPA said in Thursday's e-mail. "However, EPA conducted this testing in response to the community's request to do so. This data was also shared with the public through various means and posted to EPA's webpage in May 2023."
The median results of that samping within the village were 4.8 parts per trillion. Dioxin levels were measured anywhere from 2.6 to 14 ppt in the village.
During an environmental panel held at the Columbiana Theatre on the one-year anniversary of the derailment Smith said results of the February dioxin tests were 19 times higher than results in March -- 91.9 ppt versus 4.8 ppt.
However, the EPA said results of soil at the derailment -- where the burn was conducted -- was expected to be higher than the soil sampled away from the site as dioxin is a byproduct of combustion.
Smith said that explanation made little sense, calling anywhere the plume from the fire traveled "on-site."
This isn't the first time Smith and the EPA have disagreed. In July Smith, who has made numerous trips to East Palestine following the Feb. 3, 2023, Norfolk Southern train derailment, reported during a press conference in Darlington, Pa., that his team's sampling and testing process found dioxin levels that exceed 600,000 parts per trillion. The EPA quickly pointed out that Smith's results did not use the International Toxic Equivalents value - created to express overall toxicity -- but rather a measurement of total dioxins.
Still, the results presented by Smith in July reflected TEQ levels that were drastically higher than the EPA's findings. Smith said his samples tested at 1,900 TEQ. Smith took the sample from a business on East Taggart Street located across the street from the derailment and burn site and was able to compare that sample with a control sample from Salem (4.0) and a pre-derailment sample from Negley (2.9).
While Smith insists the TEQ of 91.9 ppt recorded at the derailment site requires additional testing, the EPA's protocols and procedures do not.
The EPA determined in 1989 that dioxin soil concentrations of less than 1,000 parts per trillion were safe for residential areas and between 5,000 to 20,000 ppt in commercial and industrial soil. Anything above those levels would trigger a cleanup and remediation. The agency tried to change that threshold a decade ago. In 2010, the EPA asked to lower that preliminary remediation goals for dioxin in soils to 72 ppt for residential soil and 950 ppt for commercial/industrial soil and considered lowering those numbers even further to 3.7 ppt TEQ in residential soil and 17 ppt TEQ in commercial/industrial soil. However, the 1989 threshold still stands, and while some states require cleanup as low as 50 ppt, Ohio uses the federal standard.
Last month, Debra Shore, thr federal EPA Region 5 administrator, maintained the EPA is open to reviewing any and all third-party research and results related to the derailment, but said, to date, none has been presented to her agency and no one has been willing to "sit down scientist-to-scientist" and go through their data.
In Thursday's e-mail, the EPA echored Shore's words.
"EPA prides itself on transparency and works diligently to provide the public with what information EPA has. Similarly, EPA welcomes outside information from credible sources and is eager to work with residents, scientists and other subject matter experts," it read. "Since the early days of the response, EPA has worked with many outside academic, government, and third-party researchers, as well as community members, to openly share information and data."