Five of the tankers on the train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, last week were carrying liquid vinyl chloride, which is extremely combustible. A controlled burn was conducted to mitigate the danger and it worked.
Authorities assured the residents that any immediate danger had passed as they lifted the evacuation order for East Palestine residents. Real-time air readings, which use handheld instruments to broadly screen for classes of contaminants like volatile organic compounds, showed that the air quality near the site was within normal limits.
Up to this point, officials have been looking for large immediate threats: explosions or chemical levels that could make someone acutely ill. But the cleanup and monitoring of the site could take years, an Ohio Environmental Protection Agency official said.
Although the explosion risk is past, people who live in East Palestine want to know about the chemical
