Palestine, Ohio train wreck: It’s the dioxin

Guest Post by Eric F. Coppolino

Dear Friend and Reader:

Most coverage of the train wreck in Palestine, Ohio is missing one word: dioxin. There were reportedly 14 tanker cars full of vinyl chloride, a precursor to polyvinyl chloride — that is, vinyl. Burning vinyl is the most serious source of dioxin in the environment — whether from trash incinerators, house fires or chemical spills.

While vinyl chloride is a precursor chemical to making PVC, any time chlorinated compounds burn there will be dioxins created. And dioxin is a manufacturing byproduct of any manufacturing process involving chlorine, from “disinfectants” to the bleaching of paper. There was plenty of dioxin in those tanker cars before they caught fire.

This mess of 14 tanker cars (really, many more, but 14 had vinyl chloride) was then set on fire by the government, apparently to make it easier to clear the railroad tracks. This was the worst possible decision. It has turned many, many miles into what should be no-man’s land. But I have not heard of one single test for dioxin being done.

Note that dioxin goes by several other names, including TCDD, and is sometimes abbreviated “2,3,7,8.” Dibenzofurans, or furans for short, are identical in their toxicity but are spoken about less often. Many other chemicals, such as PCBs, are “dioxin-like compounds.”

This Affects a Very Large Region of the Country

This is not a local issue. This massive plume will spread far and wide, and is being blown by the prevailing winds across Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York State, toward the population centers of the northeastern U.S.

And via land and water, the toxins can spread in many directions, via water, soil movement and air (since the prevailing winds are only an average). And the contamination is so serious that even soil tracking will spread significant amounts.

What few people remember is how the town of Times Beach, Missouri was evacuated, purchased by the federal government, leveled and had its zip code removed, from far, far less dioxin contamination. It’s now a state park, though I’m not sure who would want to have a picnic there.

Dioxin Has Been Silenced for a Generation

Dioxin has been out of the news for more than 30 years. Therefore, very few people today have any sense of the problem — including journalists and editors. It is one of the most serously environmental issues, but the background is not known by nearly anyone (and that’s partly why I have posted the history below).

After a series of fraudulent articles in The New York Times that claimed they are as dangerous as sunbathing, the issue disappeared. A federal reassessment of dioxin’s toxicity was stuffed early in the Clinton administration. I cover the reassessment in this 1994 article I wrote for Sierra.

Dioxins are Degradation Byproducts of Chlorine-Based Chemicals

Dioxins and their first cousins furans are compounds created when chlorinated chemicals burn, explode or degrade. They are never made as a product; they are a contaminant and degradation product. They are directly related to PCBs, which are considered dioxin-like compounds.

Dioxins were the extremely toxic component in the Vietnam War-era defoliant Agent Orange. The were at the Love Canal in Niagara Falls; they were the toxin involved in the evacuation and dissolution of Times Beach, Missouri. They are the cause of toxic shock syndrome from bleached paper tampons.

Dioxins are acute toxins on one level. There will be a lot of dead fish and animals in the path of the Ohio plume — and people will get very sick immediately. Kids are extremely sensitive due to their low body weight.

Dioxins are a Hormonal Toxin

But then there is another level of the problem. Dioxins are 1) hormonally toxic and 2) they are extremely persistent and they then build up in the food chain, generally in lipids. They are bioactive. All this BS projected onto viruses is absolutely true for dioxins, though the contagion factor is different (running through families for instance, passed through mother’s milk, affecting whole communities through a toxic release, etc.).

Dioxins are connected to every other toxins issue that ever lived, from DDT to PCBs to Roundup…they are orders of magnitude above in their effects, though it’s worth reading this for some background.

Many PCBs are close enough to dioxins to qualify as such; and PCBs degrade into dibenzofurans (also called furans), which are dioxins with one molecule of oxygen instead of two. Dioxins are never made intentionally; similar toxins are, but dioxin per se is a byproduct of other chemical processes, or a degradation byproduct.

Due to PVC, Plastics Industry is the #1 Polluter

The plastics industry is now the number one dioxin polluter (thanks to polyvinyl chloride), followed by the pulp and paper industry, due to the bleach used to make paper and absorbent paper products white. This is why nobody should ever use low-grade, non-organic paper feminine products. Use something that is not bleached with chlorine.

PVC is burned in every house fire, trailer fire, car fire and in the incineration of municipal and industrial waste. And when that happens, dioxins are created. Dioxins are also a contaimant or byproduct of nearly every chemical process involving chlorine. There have been numerous dioxin scandals over the years (such as involving contamination of Lysol “disinfectant,” Phisohex “antibacterial” soap and many, many others.

Please see my coverage of the most famous dioxin lawsuit, Kemner v. Monsanto, about another train wreck, in Sturgeon, Missouri. In this lawsuit, the ugly truth about dioxin and Monsanto came out into the open.

One Quote is Making it Into Some Articles

There is one accurate quote about dioxin that is making the rounds, in connection to the Palestine disaster:

Neil Donahue, a professor of chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University in nearby Pittsburgh, said he worries that the burning could have formed dioxins, which are created from burning chlorinated carbon materials.

“Vinyl chloride is bad, dioxins are worse as carcinogens and that comes from burning,” Donahue said.

Dioxins are a group of persistent environmental pollutants that last in the ground and body for years and have been one of the major environmental problems and controversies in the United States.

Dr. Lynn Goldman, dean of George Washington University’s School of Public Health, agrees this is a possible risk, but is more concerned about uncombusted vinyl chloride vapors that could be lurking in the immediate vicinity.

“Until there has been a thorough assessment, the soot as well as any other materials should in my opinion be treated as contaminated by vinyl chloride and/or dioxins or other contaminants until proven otherwise,” she said.

Dioxin’s Toxicity is Incomprehensible

Peter Montague, author of Rachel’s Hazardous Waste News, summarizes the toxicity of dioxin in the historical articles below:

How can we express this in terms that people can grasp? Let’s compare it to one single aspirin tablet. One aspirin tablet weighs 5 grains (or 325 milligrams, or 325 trillion femtograms), so to express one “safe” lifetime dose of 2,3,7,8-TCDD, you would take a single aspirin tablet and divide it into 32 million (actually 32,172,218) miniscule pieces. Then one of those tiny pieces would represent one “safe” lifetime dose of 2,3,7,8-TCDD.

That means that the weight of one aspirin tablet is the equivalent lifetime “safe dose” of dioxin for more than 32 million people. This is one reasons why manufacturers don’t want to distill it out of the products where it slips in — they don’t know what to do with it. So they let it go out into the environment, unmitigated.

We will have more on Friday’s edition of Planet Waves FM.