Years of deregulation, decaying transportation infrastructure and increasingly unsafe working conditions led to the conditions that created the East Palestine chemical spill. The means used to clean up the spill initially involved burning the chemicals off. The immediate objective for the company was to get cargo moving on the tracks as fast as possible, and burning is faster than pumping. The length of cargo trains has increased, along with the use of two-person crews. The toxic chemical cocktail that has poisoned East Palestine is often chemicals used in the production of polymer plastics. More than vinyl chloride spilled from this disaster, but a toxic cocktail of isobutylene (causes coronary thrombosis and dermatitis), butyl acrylate (causes irritation for the eyes, skin and upper respiratory system; dermatitis sensitization; dyspnea (breathing difficulty)), benzene (causes acute myeloid leukemia and has been linked with acute lymphocytic leukemia, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, multiple myeloma, and non-hodgkin lymphoma), ethylhexyl acrylate (causes dermatitis), and ethylene glycol monobutyl ether (causes irritation in the eyes and nose, as well as headache, nausea, vomiting and dizziness). The burn then released dioxins and other compounds into the atmosphere. Norfolk Southern poisoned and silenced a community to get the cargo rolling, with the usual complicity of the government.

Norfolk Southern sent in its own police force to maintain order in East Palestine. The investigators doing the testing are employees of Norfolk Southern. Subsequently, the community of East Palestine found itself effectively converted into a Norfolk Southern company town. The cost to human and animal life is likely to kill off many of those exposed to the toxins, with residents of the East Palestine and workers on the clean-up crews reporting serious problems with respiratory ailments.

In 2022 a rail strike was averted through the action of the US government in negotiations with the rail unions. The US Congress legislated them back to work. One of the main grievances was a complete lack of sick time or time off. The deal imposed by the federal government gave workers a small amount of sick-time combined with a pay increase, almost an insult. There exists a long history of militancy on the rails, with the Great Rail Strike of 1877, the Pullman Strike in 1894, and the Railway Shopmen's Strike of 1922. President Truman twice threatened to call the army out on railway workers during his presidency. Thus, a long history of legislation, like the Railway Labor Act of 1926, exists to control and channel discontent. Workers in the rail industry have twelve unions, all divided by trade and craft, ossified in place in a process that exists to keep commodities circulating and profits growing. The act was a mechanism for the state to replace strike activity with binding arbitration. This system tended to ossify the position of the twelve unions as bargaining agents. The act was eventually expanded to include airline workers. While not robbing them of their formal right to strike, it makes the state both mediator and restorer of order if the arbitration process fails and workers go on strike.

One umbrella organization, Railway Workers United, called for the government to nationalize the railroads, citing President Wilson's temporary nationalization of the rails during WWI. However, Wilson's nationalization was conducted so to facilitate the war effort and prevent strikes in the strategically important rail transportation industry. With a system of labor union representation in place that was engineered to divide workers the need for workers to unite beyond the boundaries imposed on them by the unions and the state could not be more clear. The stakes can be seen when a disaster of the magnitude of the East Palestine, Ohio disaster strikes and the line between company and state vanishes in the drive to get the rails running again. The same nation that deregulated the rails would not necessarily change how the rails are run as long as the accumulation of profits is involved. Where workers control, through workers' councils, would be able to drive the use of less toxic chemicals, safer transportation systems, and better conditions for the conduct of socially necessary labor. It's only the working class that can stop the poisoning of the environment for profit. With the reign of capital, the company will always own the shop, nationalized or not.

The cleanup and coverup had as its only priority to get the freight rolling again. There is a military aspect in keeping rail freight running as surely as there was during Wilson's nationalization of the rails. The same reason that last year the federal government forced a settlement to avoid a rail strike is the same reason that Norfolk Southern incinerated the toxic mess left in the wake of the train crash. Disasters like these are recurring reminders of why capitalism must be overthrown. The special legal attention that railway workers have received over the last hundred and sixty years points to the potiential of their organized power. Only with their fellow workers in other sectors too, generalizing the struggle beyond one sole industry, will they have the chance to bring the system that spawned this disaster to its knees.

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Sources: pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, cdc.gov, cancer.org, pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, cameochemicals.noaa.gov