By Jeff Skinner

It has been almost one year since Norfolk Southern ran off the rails and caused one of the greatest catastrophes in Ohio. Since that time, federal and local regulatory agencies and officials have seemingly made it their mission to cover up and obfuscate the truth. After months of documenting lies and fighting to protect his home and neighbors, a local chiropractor has had enough and is going on the offensive to take the fight to congress in Ohio’s 6th District. 

Since the beginning of the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, Dr. Rick Tsai has been documenting and investigating pollution, corruption and blatant lies regarding the safety and cleanup of East Palestine through his YouTube Channel, not just to hold those in power accountable, but also to show the world the struggles residents have faced.

“This town has, per the beginning of all this, been split 50/50 down the middle,” Tsai said. “There are those that, when I would expose the chemicals in the creek, would be thankful and the others that would say ‘shut up, you are going to ruin this for the rest of us, you are going to mess up them building a park,’ I don’t understand that ask.” 

The town is currently split on a path forward with the cleanup. At the moment, Norfolk Southern and the EPA are leveraging a possible disposal plan for the contaminated wastewater. Unable to store the contaminants in nuclear disposal facilities, nor bury it deep underground, the two groups have returned back to East Palestine offering to pay the village to dump the contaminated waste back into the Leslie Run creek for an undisclosed amount of pay. Incidents like this have driven Tsai to realize that if you want real change, you have to seek it for yourself. 

“It’s appalling and disgusting but it’s just another example of what Norfolk Southern has done here,” Tsai said. “I actually can’t believe, being a doctor, someone would make a statement like that. That we are going to take this contaminated water that people won’t take to bury miles into the ground and we are going to dump it into our creeks and ‘hey that’s going to decrease our costs for your water bill,’ I can’t even believe we have come to this point.” 

From the beginning of the disaster, Dr. Tsai has not been afraid to get his hands dirty, both physically and metaphorically. Tsai has extensively documented both his dredging of the local creek beds to demonstrate the level of contamination as well as the lackluster cleanup efforts over the last 10 months and has not shied away from pushing back against elected officials in public settings. Over the course of his documenting the disaster, Tsai has witnessed a sort of political class that uses rhetorics and doublespeak to obfuscate the issues surrounding the village. According to Tsai, he is a man that likes to speak plainly and call things what they are. 

According to Tsai, When the EPA and Norfolk Southern began holding press conferences on the cleanup efforts, they preferred to avoid frank discussion on the chemicals that now contaminated the creeks and soil and instead preferred coined catch phrases and words that allowed people to disassociate from what was happening in front of their eyes. 

“Let’s call it what it is, its contaminated water, before “its wastewater”,” Tsai said. “They throw these catchphrases around like “sheen.” the EPA came up with that one and so you keep hearing them repeating it ‘sheen, sheen sheen.’ I’ve never used their terms. I have always called it what it is, that’s benzine, its chemical contamination in our creek. They are taking contaminated water, treating it and I don’t know whose testing it and at what levels they are saying it is safe but it is contaminated with the chemicals they spilled into our creeks and our land and it’s still under the building, they’ve never been under the buildings.”

One of the more interesting exchanges Tsai had posted to his channel involved an exchange between himself and Governor Mike DeWine. In May, DeWine made a trip to East Palestine for a formal ribbon cutting for the newly dedicated medical center which would be used to help test and treat victims of the Norfolk Southern disaster. During the presser, Tsai asked DeWine a very pointed question on when the government would be tackling the actual problem facing residents, namely the chemical contamination in the creek. When DeWine attempted to deflect the question to an absent EPA representative, Tsai reacted strongly, causing a heated exchange between himself and the Governor. 

“Dewine came to dedicate and cut the ribbon on a healthcare facility, which they set up and that was to monitor people’s health and do a study on how people were reacting to what was dumped here,” Tsai said. “You don’t experiment on people while they are in the midst of all these chemicals. You either remove the chemicals and if you can’t, remove the chemicals you remove the people. You don’t do a study while they are in danger. So I asked him, ‘it’s nice you are doing this but it’s a shame we even need something like this, so what are you doing about the real problem?’ The problem is the town is built over these creeks and the chemicals in the creeks are off gassing and that’s the problem and he said ‘well let me get Anne Vogel.’ Anne Vogel was here, or she claims she was here two hours after. That is the Ohio EPA, bragging she was here 2 hours after and they were ‘johnny-on-the-spot’ and they put up useless little booms and contained what she called “the product” and that made me angry too. So you’ve got “The sheen,” You’ve got “the product”  and the “wastewater” that downplay what happened here, those are chemicals and those words never came out of her mouth. [DeWine and Vogel] came in a limo together. And I said “typical EPA” and he started scolding me saying ‘they were here within 2 hours’ so I said ‘If they were here, why did their initial report that they released say they observed Norfolk Southern laying tracks over contaminated liquid and soil?’ I believe the EPA is just as complicit as Norfolk Southern. As they pound their trains and chemicals into our soil. As they do anything up in the site, more chemicals come down into the creek. So the fact that they were here two hours after and they allowed Norfolk Southern to do what they did, that’s nothing to be proud about, that’s admitting guilt.”

Since Tsai’s initial exchange with the Governor, his YouTube Channel has increased significantly in it’s following, both by locals to the area and possibly by those hoping to keep the narratives more controlled. Much like former president Donald Trump, Dr. Tsai has seen videos he has posted get near immediate rebuttals and responses from official EPA newsletters and state health agencies. Some weeks after the exchange with the Governor, Tsai posted a video covering the difference between the different types of testing for Benzine and Vinyl Chloride in people. While the Ohio Health Department and the EPA initially recommended against blood tests for Vinyl Chloride to prove chemical exposure due to how quickly it leaves the body, it avoided the option of testing urine completely. 

“Initially the CDC said ‘the burn happened and forget about getting blood tests, we aren’t even going to suggest that because 48-72 hours it will clear from your system, it wont show up in your blood.’ I called Quest Diagnostics and I asked one of the toxicologists who said ‘that’s true for the blood test but the urine is different.’ If you are coming into regular contact and its on your walls, in your home, in your creeks  you are going to be constantly urinating those metabolites. I started doing urine tests on people and the ones I tested were very high in the vinyl chloride metabolites, which is called Thiodiglycolic acid. The CDC knew that as well. They are either feeding us half information to placate people or they are very ignorant. People tested positive for TA but also Benzine, which is a class 1 carcinogen. You don’t want to ingest it, breathe it or touch it.  But It seemed as if every time I would do something there would be at least one rebuttal in their Newsletters, whether it was the Thiodyglycholic acid, or the wetland contamination that [I pointed out].” 

Not long after Tsai’s podcast detailing the results of several patients urine screens, the Ohio Health Department issued statements arguing the results of urine screens for these metabolites would be inaccurate, seemingly in an attempt to discredit any work Tsai was doing. Much like former President Trump, Tsai has made it his mission to tackle the establishment which he sees and both insulating the companies they are supposed to be regulating and seeking to silence the average resident just looking for answers. 

“We’ve had a lot of what I will call “lies” from the EPA as well,” Tsai said. “There have been incidents where residents have secretly recorded EPA members and what they say to the press is not what they say in nonchalant conversations. I spoke with one of the top federal EPA officials on the phone we talked casually before, and I said ‘I am a man of my word, I dont record people and I believe he just gave a press conference about 2-3 weeks early that the EPA found the creeks are back to pre-derailment levels and that any chemicals we see are legacy chemicals (present prior to the derailment) but on the phone he said ‘you know Rick, I just do not believe the chemicals that we are finding are all legacy chemicals.’ Why can an EPA official casually say what he thinks is the truth and then lie on television?” 

These frustrations have led Tsai to the decision to run for the now vacant seat of Bill Johnson in Ohio’s 6th congressional district. Much like former President Trump, Tsai is an outsider in the political establishment. With no connection or inroads to the political system, he is fighting the battle of the everyman, hoping to make a difference both for his hometown and others around the 6th. No doubt his election would bring about a new form of derangement syndrome for those seeking to keep narratives tightly controlled within the halls of power, a Tsai Derangement syndrome. In our follow up piece, we will be going over Tsai’s platform and what he hopes to bring to Washington on behalf of Ohioans.