CLEVES, Ohio — A rail car in the Cleves and Whitewater Township area began leaking styrene on Tuesday, prompting evacuations and the closure of roads and businesses in the area amid safety concerns.
By Wednesday morning, officials with the Central Railroad of Indiana, which owns the train, said the train car had stopped venting styrene, but first responders were maintaining water on the car to keep it cool. Residents were allowed back in the area Wednesday night.
Officials said an explosion was a concern if the temperature of the rail car got too high; Little Miami Fire Department Chief Mike Siefke said an explosion wasn't "imminent," but that was the reason why they were maintaining water on the car.
What is styrene?
While the leak coming from the train car appeared to be a gas, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences says styrene is a colorless, flammable liquid used to make plastics and rubber.
The chemical is highly volatile, the agency says.
Styrene has a sweet smell, but manufactured styrene may contain other compounds that give it a sharp and unpleasant odor.
Small amounts of styrene are produced naturally by plants, bacteria and fungi.
Styrene is used to create everything from drinking cups to home insulation to packaging materials to the plastics in disposable water bottles. The Food and Drug Administration has ruled that styrene concentration in bottled drinking water should not exceed 0.1 milligram per liter of water.
The chemical is also present in combustion products like cigarette smoke and vehicle exhaust.
What are the health effects of exposure to styrene?
We asked Siefke and officials with the Central Railroad of Indiana whether there was any impact on air quality or drinking water in the area near the leak and they told us tests were ongoing. No test results have yet been released to the public.
University of Cincinnati Professor Jun Wang said styrene damages the body's nervous system and can cause irritation to the eyes and nose.
"If you inhale it, it will do the same thing as alcohol — make you feel dizzy and replicate something like drunkenness," said Wang.
The Environmental Protection Agency says exposure to the chemical can cause a variety of symptoms, including headaches, fatigue and weakness, throat and eye irritation and stomach problems.
The CDC says people may experience tiredness, slowed reaction times, concentration problems and balance issues if they are exposed to concentrations more than 1,000 times higher than the levels normally found in the environment.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer has determined that styrene is a possible carcinogen, though the EPA says evidence the chemical creates an increased risk of leukemia and lymphoma are inconclusive. In 2014, a report by the National Academy of Sciences endorsed styrene as "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen."
According to the CDC, there have not been any studies evaluating how styrene affects children or immature animals; hearing loss, impaired learning, changes in the lining of the nose and damage to the liver have all been detected in laboratory animals exposed to styrene, however.
Nursing infants can be exposed to styrene from breast milk, but studies into whether exposure to the chemical can cause birth defects were inconclusive, the CDC says.
Styrene exposure can be measured in blood, urine and body tissues for a short time following exposure, but testing should be done within a few hours of the exposure since the metabolites from the chemical leave the body quickly.
On Wednesday, the Ohio EPA said it has been involved since the leak was first reported, and there have been zero readings to indicate any health risk so far. Despite this, residents in the area are worried the rail car had been leaking the chemical for days.
"I wouldn't ever undermine how people are feeling about these happenings in their neighborhood," said Anne Vogel, director of the Ohio EPA. "But we have not had any readings at levels that would pose a concern for human health. And so I want to be very clear that, you know, people should not feel unsafe based on our data."
Anyone who may be feeling physical effects after a suspected exposure should go to an emergency service or call 911.
"We are working with the locals to make sure that there will be no long-term health impacts associated with this release," Vogel said. "That is the governor's guarantee. Anytime anything happens. This is not East Palestine. It will not become that. And we'll stay there and make sure that doesn't happen."
What are the environmental impacts of styrene?
Because styrene is already used in food packaging and other plastic and rubber products people come into contact with every day, trace amounts of styrene are often found in food and the environment, according to the CDC.
The EPA has determined that exposure to styrene in drinking water at concentrations of 20 milligrams per liter of water consumed in one day will not cause any adverse effects in a child.
Vogel said the Ohio EPA is testing the Ohio River, which is very close to the chemical leak, to make sure the water is safe, but to her knowledge, there is no concern for the water systems.
"We'll work closely with well fields in the area the Cleves well field. The (Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission) is engaged to make sure there are no impacts to the Ohio River," Vogel said. "Those are things that we will continue to do for the foreseeable future to make sure that there was no air deposition."
According to the CDC, styrene is quickly broken down in the air, within one to two days.
The chemical typically evaporates from shallow soils and surface water and tyrene that remains in soil or water may also be broken down by bacteria or other microorganisms, the CDC says.
The National Institute of Environmental Health's Library of Medicine says the chemical doesn't dissolve easily in water because it's less dense than water.
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