From brain fog to nosebleeds: There’s a name for what’s happening to people affected by derailment
"Toxicant-induced loss of tolerance" may be an underlying cause of the wide range of symptoms experienced by residents of East Palestine.

From brain fog to nosebleeds: There’s a name for what’s happening to people affected by derailment

This story originally appeared in Pittsburgh Union Progress on Dec. 19, 2024. It is shared here with permission.

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They began arriving shortly before noon on a frigid day last week, each one stepping into the warmth of a Darlington, Pennsylvania, office and the embraces of friends. In all, the gathering included more than a dozen people, and they quickly got busy, unloading boxes of donated hams, produce and canned goods, and setting up a makeshift food bank for their financially strapped neighbors, some of whom were already showing up. One member of the group passed around a clipboard and a pen so those waiting for food could write down their names.

You’d think it was a church group bringing their community a bit of holiday cheer until you wandered through the room and heard the conversations. Three people standing around a small table listened while one man described the nosebleeds that continue to haunt his family. In fact, he said, he’d had a real gusher the night before — it was so bad he’d had to wash the blood out of his beard. He showed pictures of blood pouring from his daughter’s nose.

Such photographs may be too gruesome to display in most places, but not here. Pictures are proof. Later, one woman showed photographs of deep, ugly ulcers on her arms and hands. Then she raised her sleeve to show the scars, which she tries to hide with makeup. She’s kept a detailed diary of everything that’s happened to her since the night of Feb. 3, 2023.

That’s when a Norfolk Southern freight train ran off the tracks 6 miles from away, in East Palestine, Ohio. Broken rail cars filled with toxic chemicals burned all that night and into the next day. Two days after the crash, officials announced some of the cars in the tangled pile still contained their toxic loads, and those cars were heating up. They could explode, officials said, so the next day they drained the chemicals into a ditch and set them on fire. (The National Transportation Safety Board later reported that the cars in question were, in fact, cooling down.) 

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The resulting pillar of black smoke looked like a special effect in a disaster movie. You’ll hear people in East Palestine describe it with one word: evil. Certainly it shocked even those who set the fire. You wonder what went through their minds as they watched the plume rise and then flatten as it hit an inversion and spread like an airborne oil spill. Did the hair on their necks stand on end? What thoughts entered the minds of Norfolk Southern executives sitting safely in their offices and homes in distant cities and, we assume, watching the video images on TV? What plans were they making? Within a few days, they had their trains running through town again. Business as usual.

Those passing out hams and canned food in Darlington last week saw the cloud and figured their community had been poisoned. Nearly two years later, they’re still angry about it. Their anger builds when they hear stories of sickness. 

And there are plenty of those. People describe rashes and sore throats, sinus infections, heart ailments, cancer, headaches, hair loss, depression, brain fog. One Pennsylvania resident says she recently lost her sense of time while driving. She arrived at her destination and wondered, “How did I get here?”

Nadine Luci has a story. Her health went haywire the day of the big burnoff. She was unlucky. Nadine lives in East Rochester, Pennsylvania, which is 16 miles from the derailment site, but on the day officials burned all those toxic chemicals she happened to be shopping in an area along Route 51 that is within a few miles of East Palestine. She went to Aldi, Walmart and a place called Tractor Supply Co., where she bought dog food. At one point, she looked through her windshield and saw that giant cloud of black smoke.

Nadine didn’t think much about it. She certainly didn’t connect the smoke to the derailment. She wasn’t following events in East Palestine very closely — TV news is just background noise to her, she says. She figured an 18-wheeler had overturned and caught fire farther west on Route 51. Big trucks roar along that road all the time.

So Nadine finished her errands and, before heading home, pulled into the drive-thru at a KFC restaurant to pick up dinner. While waiting in her car, she noticed a burning sensation on her lips. That was weird, she thought. Soon she felt the same irritation in her tongue, eyes and skin. At the drive-thru window, she asked for a cup of ice, which she rubbed on her lips as she drove home.

Back at her place in East Rochester, things got worse. Nadine’s mouth and throat felt like they were on fire. She developed a pounding headache. Her chest tightened, she had difficulty breathing. Stranger still was this: inside her body, she felt ice cold. It freaked her out.

“What’s happening?” she wondered. She called her brother Anthony in Maine. Anthony keeps an eye on the news; he knew what was happening in East Palestine. He sent her a link to a video of the chemical burnoff and suggested it had something to do with her symptoms. 

Nadine saw the video images of the fire and the roiling black cloud and thought, “Oh, my God!”

“You better get to the hospital,” Anthony told her.

The continuing health problems rising out of the East Palestine area raise a lot of questions. To a layperson, some of the issues make sense — the burning sensation in the throat, for example, and the rashes. After all, chemicals get into your airways; they settle on your skin. Lots of people have experienced irritation from solvents they use at home and work; they know how this works. But how can a toxic exposure cause gastrointestinal issues? Or brain fog? Or depression? Those who experience these things say friends and family members, and sometimes even doctors, tell them the problem is psychological. “You’re stressed out, see a therapist,” they’re told.

And stress can certainly play a role, but Texas physician Claudia Miller suggests there’s something more going on. A professor emeritus at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Miller has spent decades studying the effects of toxic exposure. She first appeared to East Palestine-area residents months ago, during a Zoom meeting organized by activists concerned about the health of those affected by the derailment. 

In his book “They’re Poisoning Us! From the Gulf War to the Gulf of Mexico — An Investigative Report,” author Arnold Mann describes Miller as “one of the most prominent voices in the field of environmental medicine.” Before becoming a physician specializing in allergy and immunology, she worked as an industrial hygienist for the United Steelworkers. There, in the early 1970s, she helped set standards for workers exposed to emissions in coke ovens, electronics assembly plants and lead smelters.

Miller says toxic agents unleashed by the derailment and subsequent fires altered certain immune cells in the bodies of many who were exposed. Those cells, called “mast cells,” are dispersed throughout the body, which is why residents report such a wide range of symptoms, from skin sores to bloody noses to reproductive and gastrointestinal issues.

Researchers are just beginning to understand how all of this works. In fact, it was only three years ago, in 2021, that Miller and a few of her colleagues published a paper exploring the interaction between toxic substances and mast cells. Most local physicians simply don’t yet know about it.

This lack of knowledge is a problem that needs to be resolved if patients are to be properly diagnosed and treated, Miller said. She notes that Peter Spencer, a professor of neurotoxicology at Oregon Health Sciences University, recently sent a letter to more than two dozen academic colleagues from across the U.S., urging them to incorporate toxicant-induced loss of tolerance, or TILT, into their toxicology programs. Spencer is considered a pioneering neurotoxicologist, so his recommendation could carry some weight.

So, what are mast cells?

Miller calls them the “first responders” of the body’s immune system. The Cleveland Clinic website describes them as “your body’s alarm system.” They’re white blood cells — you’re probably already familiar with these — but instead of residing in the bloodstream, they live in tissue throughout the body. You’ll find mast cells in the skin, lungs, brain, heart, the respiratory tract. Like other white blood cells, they protect your body from foreign substances such as viruses, bacteria, parasites and toxic substances — but not by destroying the invader.

Instead, when mast cells sense a threat, they release chemicals that open blood vessels and bring other immune cells into an affected area. Activated mast cells create mucus and cause contractions in muscles in the airways and gastrointestinal tract — all in an effort to push out harmful substances.

People experience activated mast cells in many ways — often as swollen itchy skin, a runny nose, a cough or sneeze. Sometimes even vomiting or diarrhea.

Problems arise if mast cells are altered to the point where they activate when they normally wouldn’t or shouldn’t. Chemical exposure can cause this alteration, Miller says, resulting in a disease process toxicant-induced loss of tolerance. That process may be well underway in East Palestine, Miller said.

Nadine needed to get to an emergency room but felt she was in no condition to get behind the wheel of a car, so she called her friend Cindy, who drove her to a health care facility in Cranberry, Pennsylvania. A doctor listened to Nadine describe her symptoms, then ordered an X-ray of Nadine’s lungs and a CAT scan to check her brain. Both revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

“All I had was high blood pressure,” Nadine recalls. “They thought I was crazy.”

Nadine returned home with no answers. The symptoms persisted. She took acetaminophen tablets and bought eye drops at a health store in hopes they would alleviate the dryness in her eyes. A week or so after the burnoff, she visited her primary care physician. By then, ulcers had developed in Nadine’s eyelids. and blood sometimes dripped from her nose. She saw an otolaryngology specialist, who used a scope to examine her throat. She remembers him telling her, “It looks like a bomb when off in there.” Nadine saw the image and saw what she describes as “scale.”

 

rkumari
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I am a creative and detail-oriented individual with a passion for writing, particularly in crafting news and stories that inform and engage readers. Writing allows me to explore diverse topics, break down complex ideas, and communicate them clearly to a wide audience. Staying informed about current events and sharing impactful narratives is something I deeply enjoy.

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