Ohio is facing a chemical disaster. Biden must declare a state of emergency | Steven Donziger

A train derailed and flooded a town with cancer-causing chemicals. But something larger, and more troubling, is at work

Earlier this month, a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in eastern Ohio, exploding into flames and unleashing a spume of chemical smoke on the small town of East Palestine. The train's freight included vinyl chloride, a chemical known to cause liver cancer and other sicknesses.

In response, government and railway officials decided to burn off" the vinyl chloride - effectively dumping 1.1m lbs of the chemical into the local community, according to a new lawsuit. Officials said that they did so to avert the vinyl chloride from exploding; in contrast, an attorney for the lawsuit has said that the decision was cheap, unsafe, and more interested in restoring train service and appeasing railway shareholders than protecting local residents.

Steven Donziger is a human rights and environmental lawyer, a Guardian US columnist, and the creator of the Substack newsletter Donziger on Justice