An independent scientist known for testing at the site of disasters, including in East Palestine, has conducted tests near a former battery burning research site in Piqua.
Both he and an epidemiologist who reviewed the results recommended further testing.
Residents in the Miami County city have been pushing for more information since they learned that lithium ion batteries were burn for research at a city-owned public safety training facility from 2018 to 2023.
In 2023 and 2024, Piqua city officials ordered soil and water testing at the site. Those tests indicated no lasting contamination from the program that ended in September 2023 after the Ohio EPA revoked its permit.
But environmental scientist Scott Smith tested for different chemicals. Smith took soil samples around the site in September and shared his results with WYSO. He and an epidemiologist both find the results concerning.
Who is Scott Smith?
Smith took an interest in Piqua after learning of the history of the battery testing program and announced his intentions to pursue testing here back in July.
Smith completes verified testing across the country at sites of environmental disasters, including the site of the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. His testing data from East Palestine was presented at the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry conference. He’s received an award for his findings.
Smith said he took soil samples from three sites in Piqua: a dog park about 250 feet away, a resident’s home less than a quarter of a mile away, and a bike path directly off site.
He couldn’t access the battery research site, which he refers to as “ground zero.”
At the three sites he tested, he said two of them tested high for benzo(a)pyrene and benzo(b)fluoranthene. One site also showed high levels for dioxins, he said. These chemicals have been linked to causing cancer. None of these results exceeded current federal or state guidelines.
Dioxins are regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Currently levels are established for oral exposure, but not for levels found in soil. In an email, the agency writes that these chemicals “persist in the environment and bioaccumulate in the food chain.”
Benzo(a)pyrene and benzo(b)fluoranthene are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which aren’t uniformly regulated by the U.S. EPA.
When Smith compares this to 70 areas of East Palestine he tested, the results show similar levels of contamination.
The Ohio EPA declined to comment on or review Smith’s results. The city of Piqua also declined to comment, citing a lack of details around the work plan and sampling methods Smith used.
The city previously said the wastewater from this site was “comparable to commercial and industrial wastewaters that are processed by wastewater treatment plants.”
What the results say
These chemicals have the potential to create something called synergistic toxicity when found with other compounds like metals and dioxins, Smith said.
This means on their own, a chemical can be stable. But when combined with other chemicals, he said the effects can amplify and “make people ill.”
WYSO asked Hyunok Choi to review Smith’s results. Choi is an epidemiologist and health science professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She said soil testing isn’t the most foolproof way for assessing environmental exposure, but the toxins found in the soil can pose some risk.
“When (PAHs) get resuspended in the air, they could adhere to our hair, skin, or our mucosal layers. We might ingest them, we might drink them in water, we might just breathe them in,” she said.
Choi recommends conducting further testing in the community. Choi said testing people for internal samples such as blood and urine would be more indicative of exposure.
Smith said he can’t draw definitive conclusions from these results. But he does believe the community should continue to press their leaders to do more types of environmental testing.
He intends to go over these results with a toxicologist via livestream to answer questions and concerns from the community.
“The power is really with the community to hold your elected officials accountable, to hold your state and federal agencies accountable, and collaborate as a group for the benefit of the public interest and the public health,” he said.
This post was originally published on here
