EAST PALESTINE: Team Biden Did WORSE Than Just Abandon Them… They Buried The Truth

How many times did Biden wedge the death of his son into political speeches in which it had zero relevance? Each one of those times was a slap across the face of East Palestine residents.

From Day One, it was clear that Joe’s level of ‘give an s**t’ about the derailment in East Palestine was, s the memers like to say, ‘(D)ifferent’. Joe made a point of joining Gov Shapiro at the reopening of the I-95 after a fire took out a critical bridge in Pennsylvania not long after the event itself.

We’ll recap the indifference and the inaction we already knew about before moving on to the newer revelations about the lengths to which they tried to insulate the public from horrifying truths that would have implicated the administration.

Recap — The Derailment Site

But more than a year after the East Palestine train derailment, when Biden finally got around to showing up, we were seeing stories like this one:

When the president got to East Palestine, he met with leaders and announced six National Insitute of Health grants to research universities to study the short- and long-term impacts of the derailment. Biden also restated his support for the bipartisan rail safety bill and pushed the Senate to follow the House and pass the tax reform bill so residents aren’t hit with a surprise tax bill for compensation received by Norfolk Southern.
[…] She’s hopeful the president will announce federal aid after countless advocates wrote him a letter, requesting disaster declaration. She’s also pushing for increased safety rail standards.

“Well obviously we wish he would have came a little bit sooner, but, hey, he’s here now and we can use all the help we can get right now. And we did put in for state of emergency and it hasn’t passed yet and I don’t really know all the details of that, but like I said, any help we can get, we would really appreciate,” Dilworth said.
[…] “I want to continue to hold Norfolk Southern accountable, make sure they make your community whole now and in the future,” Biden said. “And what they do not make whole, what they cannot make whole, the government will make whole. We have an obligation. We have an obligation. I can already see this derailment won’t define you. It defines you in a different way — your courage, your resilience of this community.” — CBS, Feb 2024

Recap: The Risks And Response

As of that writing, no state of emergency was declared, but FEMA was directed to give some help the residents, and NIH was looking into the situation in the category of health risks.

There were stories about the seriousness of the effects being felt after exposure: including workers getting concerning symptoms after disturbing the creek beds with ‘air knives’.

A far more damning piece by the Guardian, only a month after the incident indicated carcinogen levels were FAR greater than threshold levels that can cause cancer.

Newly released data shows soil in the Ohio town of East Palestine – scene of a recent catastrophic train crash and chemical spill – contains dioxin levels hundreds of times greater than the exposure threshold above which Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists in 2010 found poses cancer risks.

The EPA at the time proposed lowering the cleanup threshold to reflect the science around the highly toxic chemical, but the Obama administration killed the rules, and the higher federal action threshold remains in place.

Though the dioxin levels in East Palestine are below the federal action threshold and an EPA administrator last week told Congress the levels were “very low”, chemical experts, including former EPA officials, who reviewed the data for the Guardian called them “concerning”.

The levels found in two soil samples are also up to 14 times higher than dioxin soil limits in some states, and the numbers point to wider contamination, said Linda Birnbaum, a former head of the US National Toxicology Program and EPA scientist.
The data probably confirms fears that the controlled burn of vinyl chloride in the days after the train wreck in the town created dioxin and dispersed it throughout the area, experts say, though they stressed the new data is of limited value because only two soil samples were checked. — Guardian Mar 2023

For anyone who missed the detail on the first reading — it was THE OBAMA administration that killed the rules that would have lowered the clean-up threshold. Keep that detail in mind as we read the next section.

The Biden Admin Coverup

The apathy and indifference were bad enough, especially in light of the agonizing irony of Biden blathering on about Beau and burn pits causing cancer every five minutes.

Dioxins are a known carcinogen. Despite grandiose assurances that the citizens were in no danger, and with an EPA administrator making a show of drinking from the water supply, we had news reports of elevated dioxins less than a month after the incident.

Ultimately, when it came time to face the harsh realities of the East Palestine disaster and cancer risks, Joe’s administration did something far worse than merely doing nothing. They buried the truth, and left at-risk residents in the dark about the dangers they faced of developing cancer.

New documents from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request have revealed the government was aware of significant toxic exposure, health risks that would require at least 20 years of medical monitoring, and even the potential for cancer clusters following the Norfolk Southern train derailment spill and illegal vent-and-burn in East Palestine, Ohio in February 2023.

The newly obtained documents have confirmed Government Accountability Project whistleblower disclosures released over the course of the two years since this disaster that point to inevitable health impacts.

Originally, Government Accountability Project’s FOIA request was refused by FEMA to release this information leading to a lawsuit against the agency and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for this failure to respond. These bombshell documents reveal FEMA acknowledged the health risks the community and allies frequently spoke out about as a top concern.

The agency noted, “The occurrence of a cancer-cluster in [East Palestine] is not zero,” and expressed the need for a “tripwire to identify cancer clusters.” In 2023, a FEMA-appointed Federal Coordinator charged with assessing the unmet needs of the community was instructed not to directly engage with affected residents. In an internal email, the Federal Coordinator stated, “I have been advised best not to engage with the public…” and “the State does not want [the Federal Coordinator] to participate in the November 3 community meeting…” — Government Accountability Project

When citizens tried to FOIA documents about the health risks they faced, the government did its best to hide that information from interested parties.

The media scolded anyone who did not show adequate sympathy for Biden’s prostate cancer announcement. One wonders what sympathy Biden has for similar announcements made by the neglected citizens of East Palestine… and whether there would have been more if they lived in a blue state.