Key takeaways:
- Residents of East Palestine, Ohio, have been concerned about the safety of their water supply since a train derailment in the town in July.
- The Ohio EPA has maintained that the water is safe to drink, despite flawed water sampling conducted by a contractor of railroad giant Norfolk Southern.
- Residents of East Palestine remain concerned about the safety of their water supply and are calling for further testing and monitoring to ensure that it is safe.
Residents of East Palestine, Ohio, have been concerned about the safety of their water supply since a train derailment in the town in July. The derailment caused several cars containing chemicals like vinyl chloride to spill, leading to worries that the water supply could be contaminated.
In response, officials from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and local and state leaders have said that the water supply is safe to drink from and that no harmful levels of chemicals have been recorded in the air.
However, when HuffPost confronted railroad giant Norfolk Southern about the flawed water sampling its contractor conducted, the company shrugged it off as an issue of “erroneous” recording on the part of the lab that analyzed the samples. Similarly, the Ohio EPA said that the results of the samples were valid, but that subsequent “laboratory validation reports will be prepared and will address this issue.”
The final water quality analyses are now in, and they detail many of the same issues found in the preliminary reports, namely samples that were not acidified to the proper pH levels. Despite this, the Ohio EPA has maintained that the water is safe to drink.
Residents of East Palestine remain concerned about the safety of their water supply and are calling for further testing and monitoring to ensure that it is safe. The Ohio EPA has said that it is continuing to monitor the situation and will take any necessary action to protect public health.
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