What the hell is going on with all these toxic disasters in the news?
Over the past week, we’ve had a terrifying crisis at the GKN Aerospace facility in Garden Grove, CA, involving a pressurized tank of toxic chemicals on the verge of spilling or exploding for days and the evacuation of 50 thousand people in Orange County.
At the same time, right up the road in LA, we had a spill of thousands of gallons of crude oil that got into the LA River
Then, news broke of the horrifying tank rupture and explosion at the Nippon Dynawave paper mill in Longview, Washington, involving hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic liquid and 11 workers who were killed.
People have been asking me all week, “What the hell is going on?” And that’s because I’m a professional editor and an award-winning journalist who’s been covering toxic disasters like this for years. Also, I’m from Orange County, and my family lives in Garden Grove, about 10 minutes from the GKN Aerospace facility, so I’ve been watching all of this very closely.
If you haven’t been obsessively investigating these kinds of stories like I have, the recent rapid-fire bombardment of headlines can make it seem like all these toxic disasters are coming out of nowhere. An explosion here, a toxic spill there, a fire there. “Why is this happening? And what the hell do we do?”
So, right off the bat, the most important thing to understand is that this is not all just happening now. It’s been happening, and most of the time you just haven’t been hearing about it.
Did you hear about the toxic explosion and fire at the Smitty’s Supply facility in Roseland, Louisiana in August?
Did you hear about the toxic Biolab fire in Conyers, Georgia the year before that?
How about the toxic lithium battery fire at the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California?
I promise you, this is just the tip of the iceberg…
All the craziness this week actually gives me extreme deja vu that goes back to the first toxic disaster I covered while it was unfolding: The 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment and chemical disaster in the small town of East Palestine, Ohio.
From the train derailment itself to the disastrous and unnecessary decision three days later to empty five rail cars’ worth of toxic vinyl chloride and set it on fire—releasing a massive black death plume into the air and exposing communities for miles to deadly toxins—that story was so horrific and unbelievable that it drew the attention of the public and the media, and then the public and the media started noticing that more train derailments were happening all over the place.
And it felt then exactly then like it does now. People were rightly asking, “What the hell is happening? Is the sky falling? Is this all part of some big conspiracy or what?”
But because I had been interviewing so many railroad workers, I knew the reality that the US averages over 1,000 train derailments a year. Which is a big problem, but it’s not a problem the media had covered much before East Palestine, so when they finally did start covering derailments, it felt like it was all happening suddenly and it was all coming out of nowhere.
But, again, because I’ve spoken to railroad workers across the industry, I also knew that this is part of a larger problem that is the result of decades of deregulation, corporate consolidation, and ruthless, profit-seeking, cost-cutting railroad executives and their Wall Street shareholders destroying the rail industry and our supply chain so they could rake in record profits. Cutting jobs, year after year. Piling more work onto fewer workers and working them to the bone. Making the trains longer, heavier, and more unwieldy. Automating human jobs and removing layers of security designed to keep workers safe and the communities those trains are blazing through safe as well.
This all comes down to these companies obsessively trying to lower their operating ratios, year after year, and sacrificing long-term safety for short-term profits.
Don’t forget that, throughout 2022, railroad workers were preparing to go on strike for the first time in decades, and they were warning me and anyone who would listen that, if these greedy rail giants and Wall Street bloodsuckers weren’t reined in, it was only a matter of time before a deadly catastrophe happened on the rails. Then, President Joe Biden and both parties in Congress conspired to break the potential rail strike in early December of 2022, workers had contracts shoved down their throats, and nothing on the rails fundamentally changed. Then, two months later, the derailment in East Palestine happened.
There are two really important lessons here that we need to learn to understand what’s happening now, in 2026, with these toxic disasters around the country.
First, like with the train derailments, there is a similar dynamic going on here where a high-profile disaster has people and the media just paying more attention to these things now.
As a journalist who covers these kinds of disasters year round, all over the country, in red states and blue states, in cities and rural areas, I can tell you that: These disasters aren’t just starting now and they’re not freak accidents coming out of nowhere. And if you think you’re safe and far away from the danger, I have some bad news for you…
You may be living in or near a “sacrifice zone” and not even know it. You could be breathing in toxic exhaust from nearby factories and trash incinerators, your pipes may have lead that’s poisoning you, your local water supplies may be contaminated by runoff from industrial plants, nuclear facilities, fracking operations, coal mines, landfills, massive industrial farms and concentrated animal feeding operations. A truck or train or ship, operated by exhausted and exploited workers and hauling hazardous chemicals, could crash by your home. A military base or government-owned plant could be polluting your body and blood with PFAS/PFOS or radiation. Or a giant damn data center could be moving to your town.
Again, this shit is everywhere.
And if you’re only seeing this in Democrat or Republican terms, if you’re only looking at the headlines and not the history behind these toxic disasters, then you are not gonna see the full picture here. This is not a red state or a blue state problem, this is a working-class problem. Corporations and the government are turning more of America into one giant “sacrifice zone,” and more of us are being set up for sacrifice than we realize.
Just like with the corporate behemoths and Wall Street vultures who destroyed the railroad system with the help of their bought-off politicians in both parties, the crisis we’re in now developed over time. And while every toxic disaster is different, I often feel like I’m investigating a serial killer because I hear the same stories coming from different disaster zones around the country.
And if I had to name that killer, its name would be: Profit. Specifically, it’s our political and economic system that prioritizes private profits over the public good and working people’s lives.
That has been the driving force behind decades of policy measures to deregulate industries, corrupt the very government agencies that are supposed to regulate them, defang the penalties for polluting our community, and disempower the workers and local residents affected by them so they can’t do anything about it. And, of course, that is the driving force behind all these greedy executives and Wall Street shareholders across industries obsessively cutting costs while simultaneously speeding up production, ignoring safety protocols and removing safety measures, and almost always choosing short-term profits over long-term investments in safer facilities, stronger worker protections, and less outdated equipment until and unless a catastrophe happens.
Basically, all this dangerous, life-threatening, environmentally hazardous stuff has ended up all around us, and it’s all gotten less safe, over many years of corporations and politicians “fucking around” for their own gain at our expense. Now, America is in the “find out” stage, and working people are the ones getting stuck with the toxic bill.
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