The political reverberations from the Norfolk Southern train derailment and chemical fire in East Palestine, Ohio, continue to be felt weeks after the Feb. 3 disaster.

On March 2, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, blasted President Biden for not having visited the scene of the accident, claiming that “Democrats don’t give a damn about East Palestine because it’s a blue collar, red place.”

The Senator failed to mention a similar chemical catastrophe in his own city. On Nov. 27, 2019, a series of explosions ripped through the Texas Petrochemicals Port Neches plant outside of Houston, spewing carcinogens into the air, leaving fires that burned for a month, and requiring the evacuation of thousands living within four miles of the plant. In the aftermath of that explosion, Cruz made no demand that then-President Trump show up in Port Neches and confront the disaster in the state that Cruz represents.

Port Neches is part of an industrial corridor east of Houston that includes Beaumont and Port Arthur and features more than 50 businesses that handle toxic chemicals, including some of the nation’s largest oil refineries. More than five million pounds of toxic chemicals were released into the air in this corridor in 2020.

The residents of these cities and many other working-class communities across Texas and the U.S. are exposed to toxic air pollution on a long-term, chronic basis, not only in the rare instance when a train derails.  This slow-moving public health train wreck also deserves media scrutiny and government intervention, at least as much as the derailment and chemical burn in East Palestine.

There is no question that the Norfolk Southern derailment and fire in Ohio was a major accident that deserved media attention and EPA action. The burning of five tanker cars of vinyl chloride and other chemicals in a town of fewer than 5,000 people left an indelible mark in the public mind that the situation was out of control. In mid-February, the EPA announced it would take over the cleanup of the site.

But many other communities—often in Black, Latino, and lower-income areas—have suffered much higher exposures of toxic pollutants for longer periods with less attention. This is especially true in the communities where hazardous chemicals are manufactured, stored, and transported. For example, emissions from a synthetic rubber plant called Denka Elastomer in LaPlace, Louisiana, have exposed the predominately African American neighbors there to chloroprene, a likely carcinogen, at levels 14 times higher than acceptable risk standards. For comparison, air sampling around the East Palestine train wreck found levels of acrolein, another probable carcinogen, at seven times recommended levels for long-term exposure. But that was likely a relatively short-term exposure, immediately after the train wreck.

The environmental injustice in LaPlace has persisted not for days, but for many years or decades, without much notice or action from federal or state agencies or elected officials. In a promising development, EPA finally ordered Denka to clean up its act in early March. The lawsuit against the company by the Department of Justice and EPA – which has received far less attention than the Ohio train wreck – makes the case that the Denka plant’s operations present an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health and welfare due to the cancer risks from Denka’s chloroprene emissions. 

Among the people exposed on a chronic basis for many years, according to the EPA lawsuit, are children in the Fifth Ward Elementary School, located about 450 feet from the Denka chemical plant. The lawsuit points out that EPA’s unacceptable level of increased cancer risk for chloroprene is 0.2 micrograms per cubic meter. But a monitor at the Fifth Ward Elementary School averaged a reading more than eight times that amount from April 2018 to September 2020: 1.73 micrograms per cubic meter. Other community air monitors showed even higher amounts.

“When I visited Saint John the Baptist Parish during my first Journey to Justice tour, I pledged to the community that EPA would take strong action to protect the health and safety of families from harmful chloroprene pollution from the Denka facility,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a written statement about the legal action. “The company has not moved far enough or fast enough to reduce emissions or ensure the safety of the surrounding community. This action is not the first step we have taken to reduce risks to the people living in Saint John the Baptist Parish, and it will not be the last.”

Just across the state line from the Northern Suffolk train wreck, residents of Western Pennsylvania’s Mon Valley endured months of exposure to carcinogens and sulfur from a U.S. Steel plant after an industrial accident in 2018. While East Palestine is experiencing its first major battle with industrial pollution, residents of Mon Valley are regularly bombarded with toxic air. In December 2022, the Environmental Integrity Project sent EPA a letter urging the agency to order US Steel to monitor benzene concentrations at the perimeter of each of its three Monongahela Valley Plants, and to take corrective actions, after finding unhealthy levels of the hazardous air pollutant at two homes near the plant. Benzene is a known carcinogen that can irritate the skin, eyes, and throat, and lead to additional health problems.

Cindy and Dave Meckel, residents of the Mon Valley town of Glassport, said the pollution harms their quality of life. “We cannot work in our yard or enjoy being outside, ”they said in a written statement. “We fear pollution is having serious impacts on our health.”

Another Glassport resident hosting one of the community monitors worries about their family’s health. “The smell we wake up to is not only on the outside, but also the inside of our homes. Some days we can taste the pollution in our mouths,” this neighbor said.

Across the country, air pollution monitors at the fencelines of oil refineries found that nearly half of them in 2021 were releasing benzene at levels that could pose a long-term health threat to surrounding communities, according to a 2022 analysis by the Environmental Integrity Project. Fifty-six of the 118 refineries that reported fenceline air pollution monitoring data to EPA in 2021 had annual average benzene readings over three micrograms per cubic meter. That’s the level that California has determined may reduce blood cell counts, undermine immune systems, and increase vulnerability to disease if people are exposed for several years or more. Annual average concentrations at 51 of the 118 refineries exceeded this level every year since they began monitoring in 2018 or 2019.

“This only validates what we already knew,” said John Beard, executive director of the Port Arthur Community Action Network. “In a city that has twice the state and national averages of cancer incidence, and in a region that is well known for having a cancer cluster, this should come as no surprise to anyone. How much air pollution is enough to kill people?  There is really no way of knowing exactly how little or how much will cause cancer or make people sick. Any emissions of benzene are dangerous for life and health.”

After the East Palestine chemical spill site is cleaned up, some of the waste – including vinyl chloride – will be shipped more than 1,000 miles to a facility in Deer Park, Texas, just outside of Senator Cruz’s home city of Houston, to be injected into underground wells.  A company called Texas Molecular in Deer Park will be storing and disposing some of the toxic waste, likely by injecting it into unground storage wells.

East Palestine, Ohio, is ground-zero for the latest toxic explosion. But the larger issue is the air and in backyards of many of us, including Senator Cruz.

Lead photo: An explosion rocked TPC's Port Neches chemical plant outside of Houston. Photo by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.