Plan to incinerate soil from Ohio train derailment "horrifying": The Guardian

LONDON, March 6 (Xinhua) -- Contaminated soil from the site around the train wreck in the U.S. state of Ohio is being sent to a nearby incinerator with a history of clean air violations, raising fears that the chemicals being removed from the ground will be redistributed across the region, British newspaper The Guardian has reported.

The report, published on Saturday, came a month after a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, causing an environmental disaster of still unknown proportions.

The new plan is "horrifying," said Kyla Bennett, a former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official, who is now with the non-profit organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and was quoted in the report.

Incinerating the soil is especially risky because some of the contaminants that residents and independent chemical experts fear are in the waste. Chemicals, like dioxins and PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), haven't been tested for by the EPA, and they do not incinerate easily, or cannot be incinerated, said the report.

East Palestine's waste disposal has raised fresh questions about the disposal of toxic substances, it said.

The report also said that about 1.5 million gallons of wastewater is being injected into wells deep into the Earth's crust near Houston, adding that deep wells can leak waste into groundwater and are thought to cause earthquakes.