EAST PALESTINE — Contaminants from last year’s Norfolk Southern train derailment and intentional vent-and-burn traveled to 16 states, researchers at the University of Wisconsin reported Wednesday in published findings.

The data was collected through the National Trends Network which is a nationwide, long-term network tracking the chemistry of precipitation. The network provides concentration and wet deposition data on hydrogen ion, sulfate, nitrate, ammonium and chloride. In other words, the network, as part of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program, measures chemical deposits present in rain and snow.

“The robust measurements of the NADP network clearly show that the impacts of the fire were larger in scale and scope than the initial predictions, and likely due to the uplift from the fire itself entraining pollutants into the atmosphere,” the article concluded.

The work, which is partially funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, found that “pH values measured during the accident week were extremely high relative to historic data with very-high concentrations of ammonia — which can cause immediate burning of the nose, throat and respiratory tract — measured near the accident location and into New York.

Researchers compared 8,720 samples prior to the accident with 56 samples from the derailment week and 51 samples a week after the derailment.

“Many of these accident week samples were flagged for contamination — a total of 30 samples in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and almost every site in New York — with many flagged by the operator as having ‘soot / ash / dirt’ in the samples,” the article in the Environmental Research Letters Journal reported. “This contamination designation is not uncommon for rural NTN sites, but in this situation is indicative of impact directly from the accident.”

All told, the article reported that the “impacted region encompassed parts of 1.4 million square kilometers or 14% of the U.S. land area” from Wisconsin to Maine to North Carolina. Researchers estimate “that the accident influenced a substantial portion of the U.S. Midwest and Northeast,” attributing the distribution of derailment-related pollutants to air at the accident site flowing north and wrapping around into Michigan, Wisconsin, and Canada. High pressure to the west and low pressure to the east, both of which resulted in southerly surface flow causing air to move into Virginia and then back to the Northeast.

“Values this high are rarely seen in the NADP weekly measurements, and never observed consistently over multiple sites in any one particular week,” the article noted.

The network’s maps indicate that “extreme concentrations of multiple pollutants were present over a widespread area during the days after the accident” and likely deposited into all five Great Lakes. Researchers were surprised by the impacts on precipitation chemistry in Michigan, Lake Michigan and Wisconsin.

While the article listed other potential reasons for the spike in chemicals found in the precipitation samples — such as road salt and wildfires — the article states the likely cause was the burning of the train cargo and exacerbated by fire suppression methods employed to put out the fires.

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