In Conyers and East Palestine, Residents Face Lingering Effects of Chemical Disasters

Maximilian Alvarez: Kristina, what have you been seeing from your side as a community safety lawyer about the situation that folks in East Palestine are really facing right now?

Kristina Baehr: Well, I’m a survivor of toxic exposure myself.

And now I get called in to sick communities all around the country, and I help them unite and rise up and take on the bad guys.

I’ve done that now in Hawai‘i representing the Red Hill victims against the United States Navy. We won that case. We had a trial in May, and now we’re waiting on the judgment so that those people can get paid and move on with their lives.

While that case was on hold, I got a call from an expert in East Palestine and invited me to come and meet Ashley and some of her comrades in arms. And I heard a familiar story. I heard about doctors not treating people. I heard about the EPA lying to people and telling them that it was safe when it wasn’t. I heard about tests not being done properly and not testing for the right things, which drives me insane.

Alvarez: I feel intense solidarity with you on that front as a journalist who’s been connecting with these folks.

It feels like I’m investigating a serial killer, because I keep hearing the same things from communities across the country, whether it be causes of the pollution, the gaslighting about how it’s all in their heads, the ways that communities are split apart between the people who are feeling the effects and the people who are not, all that stuff. It just, you can only interview so many people from what feel like disparate, disconnected communities, and start hearing them describe the same things, before you start putting these connections together.

Kristina, I wanted to ask if you could say a little bit about what folks need that is not going to be addressed by more rail safety?

Baehr: I think, more than anything, they need healthcare. When a disaster like this happens, why can’t we come in and teach doctors how to treat toxic exposure? Why can’t we talk about how to detox the body? Why can’t we talk about some of the signs that you might look out for, things that might happen down the road?

Instead, the EPA comes in and says, it’s going to be in and out of your body in 48 hours. I don’t know if you have heard this Max, but I’ve heard that at every site. Vinyl chloride, in and out of your body in 48 hours. Jet fuel in and out of your body in 48 hours. Where is this 48 hours coming from?

People are sick, and let’s help them get better. We know how to treat toxic exposure.

Alvarez: What, if anything, has been done to address the causes of the BioLab fire and the impacts that it’s been having on your community?

Hannah Loyd: We’re just here, every day, living in it. In the beginning we had updates. And then it was like radio silence. Everything’s real hush hush. So to be honest with you, I don’t know, because we don’t know, because they haven’t said anything.

But it is toxic there. Nothing changed. It’s toxic.

Baehr: There is no legal basis to stop communicating and speaking truth to the people who are there. What happens is, the bad guys always do that. They say, well, their investigation is pending, and therefore everyone has to be silent. There’s no legal basis for that, and it’s unfair to the communities. Litigation is about accountability and truth and transparency. For the bad guys to come in and say, we’re going to shut it all down, just makes it even worse.

Ashley McCollum: We need either a disaster declaration or we need to be put on the national priority list, because people shouldn’t still be sick. People shouldn’t feel uncomfortable in their home. Home is where you feel safe and comfortable, and no one’s feeling safe and comfortable. 

Some of us are still displaced. We need help for those people who are struggling. There are some great people that are doing food drives for people that are less fortunate, and really put everything out there for the people in town. I mean, this is a little bit bigger than what we could even anticipate. 

From where we were in the beginning to now, it’s just progressing. We need some things looked at again, and looked at more thoroughly, and looked into these residents’ homes. 

We are a part of the environment. No matter what disaster you’re in, no matter how long of a time has passed, we are a part of that environment. We need to live there. And if you can’t, it’s not an environment anymore for humans.

Loyd: I just think that the county, the company, everyone, just needs to take accountability for what happened. 

People are there that are deathly sick. They’re sick and they have no other choice but to stay there. 

The citizens there now that are still there, they don’t know what to do, they don’t know where to go. They don’t know how to even seek legal counsel with getting out. Because a lot of people are elderly people, they have nothing but their little social security check. And these are people that I grew up knowing. To see them so sick, it’s just heartbreaking. 

I got up and left my house, but we need help for these people that can’t get the help or have the means or anything. We need to be heard again. Doctors need to be guided in what and how to treat the patients. They need to know how to help people get out. And we need to know what’s going on. Like, don’t tell us that we can’t talk about it, because the county is suing y’all. Just give us an update. 

Alvarez: We’re heading in the exact opposite direction of where we need to go. When we use the term ​“sacrifice zone,” what we mean is what you’ve just heard Ashley and Hannah describe. It is an area where people have been left to live in conditions that threaten life itself. 

That is unacceptable. And that is how we are treating more and more of our communities, whether they be in the path of toxic industrial pollution or intensifying weather events through man-made climate change. 

Working class communities, working people, are having their lives obliterated and having no help when they need it most. And we as a people, as a class, as humanity, need to do something to band together and say enough is enough.

This episode of the Working People Podcast was originally published on February 26.