By Michael H. Brown

Is that train derailment in Ohio a big deal?

Yes, right now a very big one, an emergency, for those in the vicinity. And also, for the country, a sign of the times.

I know only too well, as the reporter involved with exposing Love Canal in Niagara Falls, that these situations can have effects that evade the detection of experts, who, as in so many cases of toxic contamination, are currently detecting no toxic chemicals in the public water supply of East Palestine, but do suggest residents test private wells.

Fish and frogs have died, and some residents claim other animals have been affected as well.

The issue unfolded when, to prevent wild explosions, officials conducted a controlled burn of five rail cars carrying the compound vinyl chloride, which is used to formulate many products, including the hard plastic in your credit card, car parts, and plumbing. It’s a serious contaminant, one of the first proven industrial carcinogens, suspects of causing a panoply of maladies, including an especially lethal form of brain cancer (glioblastoma multiforme, tied with pancreatic cancer in deadliness).

In all, fifty rail cars derailed after an axel on one of them overheated, leading to fears of catastrophic detonations.

I know from investigating toxic situations across the U.S. in the 1980s that the toxicants involved here produce health effects that evade the tight scientific protocol required by science to “prove” a toxic effect.

Thus, an overabundance of caution is necessary.

Like Love Canal, residents upset with exposure to the chemicals are meeting in gyms and other ad hoc venues to put pressure on authorities, who — as always — fear public panic despite “low” chemical levels.

I always perceived that when it comes to chemicals such as vinyl chloride, there is no safe level.

And despite Love Canal, the U.S. continues to pump out tens of thousands of compounds, many not yet tested for cancer-causing capabilities.

More importantly, no one has any idea how toxic a mélange of such compounds might be when a number of such compounds interact with each other.

In Texas, I recall an environmental official telling me that they’d found a compound on one pasture near a petrochemical facility that was so long-chained and complex, they couldn’t even identify it. Will dioxin be found in East Palestine?

It’s time to ban the production of chemicals that cause cancer and mandate that nothing be produced if it can’t be rendered back to natural substances after use. The manufacture of plastics haunts the planet, not only due to toxicity but clogging our waterways and floating to the ocean, where particles of plastic in some cases now outnumber plankton, the microscopic algae that’s at the bottom of the food chain and absolutely essential to marine life.

Do we really think God created what and who He did, only to watch us destroy it?

[footnote: about Michael Brown and Love Canal]