Toxic Cargo: How Rail Transport of Vinyl Chloride Puts Millions at Risk, an Analysis One Year After the Ohio Train Derailment

On February 3, 2023, five train cars containing 887,400 pounds of vinyl chloride, the key building block for polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic, derailed and burned, setting off a major environmental health disaster that sickened area residents and first responders, killed wildlife, and contaminated East Palestine, Ohio and surrounding communities. OxyVinyls is the largest vinyl chloride monomer producer in the United States and the third-largest PVC supplier in the United States. How much of this hazardous chemical is transported every year, and how many people are put at risk? To better understand the magnitude of this hazard, we established the most likely rail routes for shipping of vinyl chloride from two OxyVinyls plants in Texas to four PVC factories in New Jersey, Illinois, and Ontario. We estimate that up to 36 million pounds of vinyl chloride travels on more than 200 rail cars across nearly 2,000 miles of US railways at any given moment. Over a year, an estimated 8,595 rail cars carry approximately 1.5 billion pounds of vinyl chloride from OxyVinyls to these plastics plants. The rail shipment of vinyl chloride to make PVC plastic puts more than three million people at risk. We estimate more than three million people live, and about 670,000 children attend more than 1500 schools, within one mile of the train route between Texas and New Jersey.