EPA Failed To Protect Ohio Residents After Toxic Train Derailment

The EPA has failed the residents of Ohio, and now the Inspector General is launching an investigation into how badly the agency screwed up the testing in the city that they now swear is totally safe. But the residents know better, and Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins got the chance to speak with Status Coup reporter Louis DeAngelis about what's happening - Louis just returned from his second trip on the ground in East Palestine speaking to residents and experts that all agree the city is unsafe.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

It's nearly been two months since Norfolk Southern's train derailed in the city of East Palestine, Ohio. And if you're watching the news, you probably assume everything is fine, because you literally have to search for any updates on what is happening there. But luckily, we have with us once again, Louis DeAngelis, who has just completed his second trip to East Palestine. So Louis, welcome back to Ring of Fire. It's great to have you. And I just gotta say first and foremost, thank you for being on the ground. Thank you for keeping up with this story, because again, the media's moved on. You know, right before I sat down here, I'm going through and I'm trying to read about the latest there, and there's just not, the Guardian had a good story. But other than that, you get local news and that's it.

Yeah, there is not much going on as far as media coverage in East Palestine at this point, unfortunately. Thanks for having me back on again, Farron, and, you know, thanks to also to Status Coup for being able to enable me to be able to continue to report on the story. They're the ones who've made it possible for me to be able to have both of these trips to get out there and continue to tell the stories of what are happening to folks in this town. And I can tell you things are not okay still in East Palestine. We are over 50 days later. It's a couple days past that at this point. Residents unfortunately, are still getting actually sick from smells in the air still at this point, which sounds unbelievable unless you're there yourself to see it.

It's something hard to show on camera. But folks unfortunately are still having all sorts of symptoms raising, ranging from nose bleeds still. They're having eye irritation, sore throats, folks still getting diagnosed with bronchitis caused by chemical exposure, breathing problems, bad headaches, tightness in your kind of neck and chest. And I can actually tell you firsthand, unfortunately, on the second trip, the beginning of the week, I'll say, things seemed to be improving. The weather was cold, it was fairly snowy. It was windy and I actually wasn't noticing as much of the smells and things that I had noticed on my first trip. But low and behold, as the week went on, the temperatures warmed up and the weather got better and the smells were very prevalent in town, to the point that later on in my second trip to East Palestine, the smells actually got so bad during a couple interviews that I was doing.

I started getting a bad headache and I put a respirator on for the remainder of my day in town. And the remainder of that trip, I essentially wore a respirator the majority of my time there, with the exception of doing interviews because the headache that it causes is terrible. You can smell it, it doesn't feel good. And when you're, when you're breathing it, and you know, I'm going and I'm, you know, exposing myself to it for smaller periods of time. Some of these folks don't have a choice. They work right in town. They've had trouble relocating. So things are still not right in East Palestine even today.

And so when we think about this happening here, the smell, it's not just, oh, it's the odor due to the irritants, that's a pretty good sign that the particles are still floating around. And so that's what folks need to really, you know, comprehend here. This hasn't blown away. It's not getting just taken away in the weather. The particles are still there, and we are seeing illnesses.