Results come back from independent water testing in East Palestine
EAST PALESTINE, Ohio (KDKA) -- People wanted to know who to trust in the days, weeks and months following the toxic derailment in East Palestine. Some started calling for independent water testing, but no one really knew what that meant. So KDKA-TV took a water test kit to the areas impacted looking to find out if there's still something in the water.
Justin Johnston owns Big Pine Consulting in Pittsburgh and does environmental planning and studies. He first tested the water at Coalbank Run a few weeks ago and he was repeating it with KDKA-TV for a reason.
"This was one of the sites that had the highest number of SVOCs so I wanted to do the whole suite at this one again," he said.
SVOC stands for semivolatile organic compounds.
"The SVOCs that I found, they're also called polyaromatic hydrocarbons, PAHs, whichever word you want to use, PAHs is the acronym. That's what we found -- most of them are carcinogens so we really need to pay attention to them because even in small amounts, they can be dangerous," he said.
That's just one of the reasons Johnston decided to pay for this testing on his own. He said it was thousands of dollars but he wanted to know the results himself.
The first time, he found 11 substances in this water -- six substances from incomplete combustion, consistent with the plume from the controlled burn. And five of the six on the list are probable carcinogens.
The catch is that the Ohio EPA's report didn't detect that.
"I thought mine would look exactly the same but they didn't, and the reason is simply detect levels," he said.
Johnston uses ALS Laboratory and believes the state agency uses Pace Analytical.
"Whatever is happening in the Pace Analytical lab, their detect levels are four times higher than what ALS groups minimum detect level," he said.
He doesn't know why different labs use different detect levels, so KDKA-TV asked PACE and learned these detect levels do differ across labs and they're expected to fluctuate for a number of reasons, and labs are required to reassess their levels each year.
"A lot of people assume that just because something says non-detect that it's not there but really it just means it's not there in a level that's above the minimum detect level," Johnston said.
When the results from the samples KDKA-TV collected with Johnson came back from a lab in Holland, Michigan, he translated the numbers, saying, "It's not in the surface water in detectable concentrations, so that is good."
He calls it "apparent good news" because one question remains: "Where did it go? Is it locked in vegetation? Has it sunk into the soil below run-off? Is it going to be in the crops now?"
A quick scroll of the report shows a bunch of Us for undetected.
"It means there is no longer any detectable SVOCs in the water in any samples," Johnston explained.
"Why did you find SVOCs in some samples a few weeks prior, but in our testing, we didn't find any?" KDKA-TV's Meghan Schiller asked.
"I think the rain flushed the SVOCs downstream," he said.
The good news now: the lab used an even lower minimum detection level this time around.
So, what's next? Johnston wants to closely follow the soil testing underway right now by a few local universities. If the water is looking good, what does the ground near the derailment show?
KDKA-TV plans to continue to follow this and will let you know.