The U.S. government has a specialized plane loaded with advanced sensors that the EPA brags is always ready to deploy within an hour of any kind of chemical disaster. But the plane didn’t fly in eastern Ohio until four days after last year's disastrous Norfolk Southern derailment.
Whistleblower Robert Kroutil poses for a photo Monday, May 13, 2024, in Olathe, Kan. Kroutil, who worked supporting an EPA program to collect aerial data, is questioning the agency’s efforts to collect data with a specialized airplane after a 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio . A black plume rises over East Palestine, Ohio , as a result of a controlled detonation of a portion of the derailed Norfolk Southern trains, Feb. 6, 2023.
Kroutil said his team labeled the mission inconclusive in their report because only eight minutes of data was recorded in the two flights and the plane’s chemical sensors were turned off over the creeks, but EPA managers changed“We could tell the data provided from the ASPECT plane’s two East Palestine flights on February 7 was incomplete and irregular. We had no confidence in the data. We could not trust it,” Kroutil said.
The agency said its “air monitoring readings were below detection levels for most contaminants, except for particulate matter” in the first two days after the derailment and “air monitoring did not detect chemical contaminants at levels of concern in the hours following the controlled burn.” Officials say data gleaned from more than 115 million readings doesn’t show any “sustained chemicals of concern” in the air since the derailment.
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