2023-02-16 08:00:00
On February 3, a freight train carrying highly toxic chemicals derailed and exploded in the US state of Ohio. A “controlled burn” of the chemicals was then carried out last week, knowingly exposing residents of the affected East Palestine and surrounding area to the risk of poisoning. This ruthless measure once once more reveals the murderous indifference of the capitalist ruling elite to the life and well-being of the working class.
The shocking images of thick black smoke billowing high into the atmosphere and reports of dead animals have spread rapidly across social media. The pollutants were thus able to spread far beyond the original train disaster in the air and in the water.
The burning on February 6 took place just three days following the train derailment. The freight train transported, among other things, the highly carcinogenic vinyl chloride and caught fire shortly before East Palestine. The town of 4,700 residents is located on the border with the state of Pennsylvania, northwest of Pittsburgh. Only three days following the cremation, on February 9, the previously evacuated residents were allowed to return to their homes.
Hundreds came back despite no systematic testing to see if chemicals had poisoned drinking water and contaminated their homes. It is known that even the smallest amounts of vinyl chloride can cause cancer. When burned, it breaks down into the gas hydrogen chloride and the chemical phosgene, which was used in World War I to kill soldiers in the trenches.
But Norfolk Southern rail company executives and state regulators have been pushing for the line to be opened and service resumed as soon as possible, regardless of the consequences for local residents.
As hazmat expert Sil Caggiano bluntly stated this week, “We basically poisoned a town with chemicals so we might open a rail line.”
He added: “There are a lot of what-if questions. We see this thing in 5, 10, 15, 20 years and we’re like, ‘Gosh, cancer clusters might show up, the well water might go bad’.”
Transportation company Norfolk Southern, which reported profits of $3.7 billion in 2022, boasts of having provided more than $1 million in financial aid to those affected. In addition, air tests were carried out in the houses and the drinking water was examined for possible contamination. It’s a bit like an arsonist bragging regarding providing blankets to a freezing family following burning down their home. Or a murderer gets permission from the police to search the scene of his crime.
The American railroad has achieved the highest profit margin of any industry, over 50 percent, by neglecting infrastructure and ruthlessly exploiting the railroad workers. Employees were denied paid vacation and the staff was reduced to a single train attendant. In this madness, the modern robber barons rely on their partners in the union bureaucracies and in the ranks of the Democrats and Republicans. That was evident in the banning of a rail strike and the enforcement of sell-off collective agreements by President Joe Biden and the Democrats late last year. The union bureaucracy has supported these policies to suppress the class struggle.
America has a long history of systematically poisoning its populace in the pursuit of profit. It even goes back to the early days of industrial development. Despite the introduction of regulations and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in the 1970s, the release of toxic chemicals into drinking water and the air remains a common phenomenon with no serious consequences for businesses. This is especially true in working-class neighborhoods devastated by decades of deindustrialization and mine closures.
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In 2014, water in Flint, Michigan was contaminated with lead. A significant part of the population became ill because the city government had decided to draw water from the polluted Flint River for reasons of cost. That same year, 300,000 West Virginia residents temporarily lost access to drinking water when thousands of gallons of a toxic chemical used in coal processing spilled into the Elk River.
Other places and events have also been given an inglorious place in history: Love Canal, a working-class neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York that served as a dump for toxic chemicals into the 1970s; Three Mile Island, the nuclear reactor that partially collapsed in 1979, releasing radioactive gases and iodine into the surrounding region; Hinkley, California, where wastewater from utility Pacific Gas and Electric contaminated drinking water wells with hexavalent chromium.
The profits before lives policy determines the attitude of the ruling class on all issues. This was most evident in the response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than a million people in America and is estimated to have caused an excess of 21 million deaths worldwide.
The working class must fight to expose the reality of the East Palestine catastrophe. She must demand that those responsible for the mass poisoning be held accountable and not just pay the fines imposed by the authorities. It is necessary to learn the lessons of Flint and the many other disasters: The ruling class and its political representatives in the Democratic and Republican parties will try to cover up and downplay the real extent of the disaster for years to come. We call on railroad workers to join the railroad workers’ action committee, the Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee, formed during last year’s wage war, to take control of the railroads and put safety before deadly profit .
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