Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to Public Health Question at jh.

.edu.

That's Public Health Question at jh.edu for future podcast episodes.

This is Josh Sharfstein.

Today, the Ohio train derailment.

I speak to Johns Hopkins professor Tom Burke,

who previously led environmental efforts for the state of New Jersey

and served as the chief scientist at the Environmental Protection Agency.

We talk about the risk to residents, the knowns, the unknowns, and where to go from here.

Let's listen. Dr. Tom Burke, thank you so much for joining me in

Public Health on call to talk about this terrible situation in Ohio. It started with a train wreck.

It sure did. And like most train wrecks, as you know as a health official, things happen on Friday nights, right?

And so late at night on a Friday, there was a wreck and there was a delay in reporting.

And unfortunately, more than 20 cars of hazardous material were involved in a release and

ultimately a major fire in East Palestine, Ohio.

Let's start with what we know about the actual hazards.

What kind of chemicals were aboard?

Well, from what we know, there were hazardous chemicals involved in some of these cars that derailed,

probably the most notorious is vinyl chloride, which is part of a plastics

manufacturing. We all know polyvinyl chloride and PVC pipes and other things and things for

...