"Appalachia’s fracking boom is fueling the expansion of American plastics manufacturing, including production of vinyl chloride, the carcinogen used to make PVC that burned in East Palestine, Ohio."
"On the evening of May 17, 1970, the 19th car of a freight train derailed in the Pennsylvania village of Cromby, a small town nestled along a horseshoe curve in the Schuylkill River about 30 miles from Philadelphia.
The car was carrying thousands of gallons of vinyl chloride, a highly flammable gas that is used to make polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, a plastic used to make pipes and flooring and known for its durability. En route to a nearby Pennsylvania plastics company, the train’s four cars containing the volatile chemical had originated at a plant in Freeport, Texas, 1,600 miles away.
Twenty families in Cromby were evacuated from their homes, and two police officers and a volunteer who was helping to evacuate people were taken to the hospital after being exposed to the toxic fumes.
To avoid a catastrophic explosion, firefighters sprayed water on the leaking car for 24 hours, emptying its contents into the Schuylkill even as some of the gas escaped into the air. The town’s municipal water treatment plant had to be shut down. “If somebody would have been careless with a match,” the local chief of police said, “all hell would have broken loose.”
Fifty years later, vinyl chloride has become infamous for its involvement in another train derailment, in East Palestine, Ohio, just over the Pennsylvania border. In February, officials released more than a million pounds of vinyl chloride into the environment in a controlled vent and burn, after five cars carrying 115,580 gallons of the hazardous chemical derailed. Two thousand residents were evacuated, and some have since experienced health issues they blame on the vinyl chloride burn."
Kiley Bense reports for Inside Climate News December 5, 2023.
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