Jami Wallace, resident of East Palestine, Ohio shared her experiences with us on our podcast. She spoke at the Labor Notes Conference in front of 100 participants and explained the rare cancers that folks are being diagnosed with, and the lack of government support for the residents of East Palestine. The Blue Shirt Justice League spoke about the botched way the EPA gathered samples…with sandwich baggies. They’ve conducted independent testing, revealing elevated dioxin levels in the environment. The University of Kentucky set up a research program with the residents of East Palestine.
So this article from the Wall Street Journal is no surprise to us at PRN, but it’s behind a paywall, and we don’t think that is right. This is a major public health issue for an estimated 25 million Americans that live in proximity to railroad tracks and are therefor in the “blast zone”.
Here is the archived article https://archive.ph/HIlgh.
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/contractor-played-down-contamination-risks-after-ohio-train-disaster-worker-says-8fad3ab4
Contractor Played Down Contamination Risks After Ohio Train Disaster, Worker Says
Whistleblower alleges she was pressured to report ‘zeros,’ conceal animal deaths after 2023 East Palestine derailment; testing company denies allegations
ET
A former environmental scientist who responded to Norfolk Southern’s 2023 Ohio derailment said the contractor she worked for took numerous steps to conceal contamination, from pressuring her to dismiss test results and report “zeros” to concealing animal deaths.
“They emphasized that we wanted zeros in our reports,” Peggy Dixon wrote in a 97-page affidavit about her work. “But zeros didn’t match what we were experiencing on the ground.”
The fiery derailment in East Palestine led to one of the worst U.S. chemical disasters in recent years. The intentional burning of vinyl chloride in derailed tanker cars sent a cloud over the town of 4,500 people. Three years later, questions are mounting about the response and ongoing risks.
Last month, following separate allegations, Vice President JD Vance and Lee Zeldin, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, asked the agency’s Office of the Inspector General to investigate how the Biden administration and private entities handled the disaster. Dixon’s affidavit was filed Wednesday by a whistleblower group as part of an investigation request to the EPA’s Office of Inspector General.
Dixon worked for the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health, a consulting firm that has responded to thousands of industrial accidents and natural disasters on behalf of corporations and governments. As one of the contractors Norfolk Southern hired, it worked with the EPA to develop testing plans in East Palestine.
Dixon was deployed to the town two days after the derailment and remained for nearly three months. As an “environmental rapid responder,” she tested air in homes and other sites for volatile organic compounds and other contaminants. She returned again in 2024 and 2025.
She said a variety of CTEH’s practices were aimed at minimizing reports of contamination. Managers improperly calibrated testing equipment and questioned results showing elevated contamination, Dixon said in her affidavit, while equipment that recorded contamination was taken out of use.
“In my view, we were using improperly calibrated, sometimes faulty, and fundamentally insensitive equipment to monitor areas with known chemical hazards,” Dixon said.
Company managers omitted some elevated chemical readings from testing reports, Dixon said, and they told workers who produced too many detections they would be sent home.
Dixon also alleges that CTEH told workers to conceal animal carcasses found near creeks and in woods. She said she saw more than two dozen dead animals, including raccoons and beavers. Dixon began taking photographs and screenshots of text messages about air-quality readings, some of which are included with her affidavit.
CTEH denied the allegations. It said employees are never instructed to falsify data or report “zeros,” that no data is omitted from reports and that equipment is properly calibrated. Employees were instructed not to handle animals, but to notify a team leader if they were found, the company said.
“Our role is to provide accurate, objective scientific data, and we stand behind the integrity of our work,” said Paul Nony, the company’s principal toxicologist. EPA contractors typically worked alongside CTEH employees and compared readings, he said.
CTEH, which was acquired in 2020 by Montrose Environmental, was renamed Onterris in April.
The EPA didn’t respond to a request for comment on the allegations. The agency has said it collected over 28,000 air samples and found no ongoing exposure in the East Palestine community from contaminants released by the derailment and subsequent cleanup. “We have a rigorous quality assurance process in place to post final, validated data and are confident in our methodologies,” Mike Bastasch, an EPA spokesman told The Wall Street Journal last month.
Norfolk Southern referred questions to CTEH.
Dixon is working with the Government Accountability Project, a group that collaborates with whistleblowers. It has obtained other findings critical of the cleanup through Freedom of Information Act requests and other whistleblowers. The group filed Dixon’s affidavit Wednesday as part of its push for further investigation.
“Her disclosure demands hard scrutiny of a system in which EPA leans on contractors selected and paid by the responsible party to measure that party’s own contamination,” said Lesley Pacey, the group’s senior environmental officer.
East Palestine residents have questioned CTEH’s practices. In one instance, a resident recorded a 2024 conversation with the former EPA on-scene coordinator in East Palestine who said CTEH and another contractor “softened” conclusions.
“Their data is good. Their interpretation of their data is in their client’s best interests,” the official said, according to a recording reviewed by the Journal. The Government Accountability Project previously sent the recording to the EPA’s Inspector General.
Environmentalists and others have accused CTEH of minimizing contamination after other high-profile disasters, including the 2008 Tennessee Valley Authority coal-ash spill and the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. CTEH said its testing in both accidents was accurate.
More recently, in Moss Landing, Calif., where a 2025 lithium-ion battery-plant fire flared up this month, residents criticized CTEH’s air-monitoring findings last year of no hazardous levels of chemicals or threat to public health.
Dixon, who worked in Moss Landing in early 2025, said in her affidavit that air testing didn’t include an adequate range of contaminants or indoor air sampling, even though residents had been told to shelter in place.
Brian Roeder, a co-founder of Never Again Moss Landing, a citizen group, said he believes CTEH has played down the severity of the accident. “I have zero confidence in CTEH’s sampling,” he said.
CTEH said that its Moss Landing testing plan was approved by the EPA and that it has provided accurate data responding to disasters for more than 25 years.
In East Palestine, Dixon said she registered volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, inside a home that sits above a creek at 2 parts per million, well above the level that triggered response teams to investigate and take action. A manager suggested her equipment might be malfunctioning or needed to be recalibrated, cleaned or swapped out, but she insisted on filing a report, Dixon said.
In another case, Dixon said she recorded a high VOC reading at a manufacturing plant next to the East Palestine accident site. The smell sickened response workers who had to take breaks outside, she said. A manager attributed the readings to a paint-thinner spill, but Dixon said she had also found high readings 400 yards away.
“The data was presented in a way that downplayed the risk to deflect responsibility,” Dixon said. “That was a turning point for me. I realized this wasn’t about public safety—it was about liability.”
CTEH said it rejected any suggestion that its practices are intended to hide or minimize detections. “No employee is ever instructed to falsify, alter, or suppress data,” the company said.
In homes, Dixon said, CTEH managers instructed workers to attribute chemical readings to running vehicles, freshly cut grass and household items like candles and pet waste.
The CTEH toxicologist said VOC readings can be influenced by sources such as paint thinner, burning candles and vehicle exhaust and factors such as wind direction. “Detecting VOCs 400 yards from a potential source is feasible depending on the source,” Nony said.
Dixon said she and others who worked in the town’s contaminated creeks developed symptoms like dizziness and rashes. CTEH and EPA officials blamed elevated chemical readings on legacy pollution, according to Dixon’s affidavit.
Nony said CTEH would never knowingly put employees or anyone else “in harm’s way by misrepresenting environmental conditions.”
Workers’ symptoms were similar to what residents were experiencing, Dixon said. “Early on, some families seemed mildly symptomatic, complaining of headaches, scratchy throats and sinus issues,” she said. “But as the weeks passed, symptoms grew worse. By the middle of March, families I visited were clearly more ill than they had been in February.”
Dixon said she still suffers from physical symptoms, which she attributes to her time in East Palestine. She worked for CTEH from 2021 through March.
“Based on my knowledge and everything I saw and experienced, East Palestine has always been more polluted and contaminated than what the EPA ever stated,” Dixon said in an interview with the Journal. “It has always been more dangerous than what the reports from CTEH stated.”
Image: National Transportation Safety Board, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons