The Associated Press with reference to information received from the railway operator Norfolk Southern reported the accident on Saturday, February 4. The train, consisting of 100 cars, transported goods from Madison (Illinois) to Conway (Pennsylvania). More than half of the train left the tracks, after which a fire started – there was no information about the causes of the accident and the number of victims.
The elimination of the consequences of the fire is complicated by the contents of the train cars. According to the information provided by Norfolk Southern, 20 of them carried dangerous goods, 14 of them contain vinyl chloride. According to the representative of the National Transportation Safety Board, Michael Graham, it is not possible to check the contents of one of the cargo containers, because he “periodically releases the contents of the car through a pressure relief device, as provided.” Graham also noted, “We are currently working on checking which wagons with hazardous materials, if any, were damaged.”
In December 2022, the largest environmental disaster occurred in the United States. About 14,000 barrels of Keystone oil leaked from the pipeline, some of which ended up in a local stream
*Vinyl chloride is an element for creating polyvinyl chloride used in plastic products. According to modern research, the use of these chemical compounds can cause cancer and, first of all, liver cancer.
The material was collected and processed by Sofia Chernopyatova.
