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RUSSELL MURPHY: I still have a metallic taste in my mouth.
I still have numbness in my gums.
I'm now on an inhaler that I've never had in my life.
When you go outside and you smell this,
and then your throat goes numb and you lose your voice
and you can't get your breath, it's just--
it's heartbreaking.
I just have no other way to describe it.
This is home.
This is-- we put effort, heart, soul,
money, 22 years of our life.
Like, it's just not normal for us anymore.
LINDA MURPHY: This is an environmental disaster,
and this is a health crisis.
And it needs to be addressed as such.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The vinyl chloride urinalysis came back with vinyl chloride
in my system.
SHELBY WALKER: It showed up positive for vinyl chloride
and benzene in my urine.
And my husband's has also.
ANDREW WHELTON: It can be so toxic, acutely,
like immediately when you're exposed to it.
Vinyl chloride is a carcinogen. And so at low doses,
it can cause long-term health impacts.
The nurse handed me the results.
And she just looked at me, and she said, I'm really sorry.
And would you move?
As I'm going to throw another rock right here,
would you stay here?
Would you drink that water?
Would you be affiliated with this?
Would you bathe your kids when it's bubbling up
and it looking like an oil slick?
ANDREW WHELTON: We got involved when many statements
by government agencies are being made about safety
because there wasn't really any data available.
Many people were saying that the water's safe.
The wells are safe.
The contamination had washed downstream, no longer
posed an acute health risk.
That didn't make sense to me.
It had become apparent that officials
didn't really know exactly what they should be testing for.
So we wanted to figure out what they should be testing for.
So we're 100% volunteer.
We initially got involved with a team of four people.
And because of the need in East Palestine and Ohio
and Pennsylvania, 20 faculty, staff, and students
are involved.
So we've been to the area four times.
We have collected over 300 samples.
I was shocked at the scale of contamination
in East Palestine that wasn't being talked about.
And the East Palestine Fire Department
feel it is now safe to be in the evacuation area.
With the full support and backing of Governor DeWine,
I'm happy to announce that the evacuation order is now lifted.
We also, though, have done the testing in specific areas,
water and air.
And for those areas that we have deemed safe,
we believe that because the science and the data
proves that.
I think it's bogus.
I think what they're testing for may be safe,
but they're not testing for everything.
When I'm outside, I smell it.
And that smell was never there before, so how is that safe?
LINDA MURPHY: We don't fall into the one-mile zone.
OK.
There's no danger, but yet it's in my system.
Can you explain it?
No, they can't explain it.
If you want to say that the water's safe, the air's safe,
and you know some chemical is from the spill
and you're not looking for it in the drinking water,
then you can't say that.
REPORTER: Watch this.
Just see that chemical pop out of the creek.
This is disgusting.
And the fact that we have not cleaned up the train crash,
the fact that these chemicals are still seeping in the ground
is an insult to the people who live in East Palestine.
After leaving, I became sick.
So I had headaches for two days straight.
And then a week later, the CDC sent a team in.
And seven of their employees got sick.
LINDA MURPHY: We have a flier from the EPA
that says that "there is no reason to believe
that the particles in the smoke produced
from the train derailment fire contain substances
at levels of concern."
Are you kidding me?
This is what they are putting out and giving to us.
And the last sentence is, "results from the sampling
to date"--
this is the soil sampling--
"have not shown any cause for concern."
What was interesting and was--
this was given to us, they told us they didn't
have the soil samples back yet.
ANDREW WHELTON: Because that pollution just
doesn't go straight up and come straight down.
It spreads out like a plume.
SHELBY WALKER: When my yard floods, it's bubbling.
It looks like a war zone out here.
It got so bad that I couldn't hardly see.
I had just stuff oozing out of my eye.
It's, like, now we're, like, science experiments to them
because they don't know.
LINDA MURPHY: We're in a chemical cocktail,
and we're lab rats.
It's a wait and see what happens in five years, 10 years.
I hope Norfolk gets their pocket out and gets us
a cancer center here.
Their train wrecked, but it derailed our lives.