The Trump administration announced plans to investigate the long-term health effects of a toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, as many residents are still reeling from the chemical spill that upended the tiny Appalachian community over two years ago.

At the request of Vice President JD Vance, an Ohio senator at the time of the 2023 disaster, the National Institutes of Health announced Thursday that it has launched a five-year, $10 million research initiative to assess and address the long-term health outcomes stemming from the train derailment.

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Vance praised the decision in a statement that applauded President Donald Trump for taking the Ohio matter seriously and accused the Biden administration of failing “to examine the potentially dangerous health impacts on the people of East Palestine” when the derailment happened on its watch. 

“I’m proud that we finally have a new president that takes the concerns of everyday, working-class people seriously,” Vance said. “This historic research initiative will finally result in answers that this community deserves.” 

When the derailment shattered the roughly 5,000-person community in February 2023, Vance swiftly called for a Paycheck Protection Program-style effort to ease residents’ burdens. PPP was a pandemic-era program in which businesses were given grants and loans to stay afloat amid government shutdowns. 

As one of Ohio’s two senators in 2023, Vance’s visits to the distressed area often included Trump, then out of office, touring the damage and meeting with affected village residents.

Former President Joe Biden received intense criticism from Republicans at the time for waiting over a year before visiting the village, while his transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, also faced censure for his slow public response to the crisis. 

Earlier this year, Vance returned to East Palestine to commemorate the second anniversary of the explosive train derailment after being elected vice president for Trump’s second presidential term. 

“I talked to the president about this visit a couple of days ago. The president loves this community,” the vice president said in February. “Of course, he visited himself personally, and President Trump just wanted to deliver a message that this community will not be forgotten, will not be left behind, and we are in it for the long haul in East Palestine.”

Vance also detailed his hopes as part of the new administration to push for more baseline testing so residents could track their health annually to see if there had been any effect, similar to the research studies announced by the NIH on Thursday. 

“It would’ve been better if it had been started early [under Biden], but I actually had the conversation with my team this morning,” the vice president told the Washington Examiner during his East Palestine visit this year. “We still want it to happen, and it’ll still be helpful scientifically for it to happen. And now, obviously, we have the whole administration at our disposal.” 

It’s about “giving people confidence they can really rebuild, is that it’s safe, that the air is clean, that the water’s clean, and so forth,” he added.

The Norfolk Southern train was hauling 20 cars containing hazardous materials, including at least five toxic chemicals, when it derailed on Feb. 3, 2023, in a fiery crash, prompting massive flames and a billowing cloud of toxic smoke to hover over the community. At least 10 cars containing toxins such as vinyl chloride, a chemical linked to liver damage and a rare form of liver cancer, were among the 38 cars that derailed that day. Thousands of dead wildlife were discovered near the train wreckage.

Amid concerns that the chemicals in the derailed train could spark an explosion, officials declared a state of emergency and evacuated roughly 2,000 residents two days after the crash to conduct a “controlled burn” of toxic materials to prevent an even larger disaster.

But a black plume of vinyl chloride that emerged after Norfolk Southern Railway burned five cars filled with hazardous materials and dangerous compounds such as dioxins raised fears that chemicals were released into the nearby soil, air, and water. Amid concerns about the community’s health and the long-term effects of the toxic materials in the train cars, which burned for days after the crash, the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies offered safety inspections for worried residents. 

However, the crisis was further tainted by accusations that federal officials lifted evacuation orders too early and allowed residents to return to homes still tainted by toxic chemicals because the processes the EPA used to test homes weren’t adequate for finding all hazardous materials. EPA officials often relied on odor alone to detect certain toxic chemicals instead of equipment, despite warnings from experts that smell could be an unreliable indicator, according to a CNN analysis. 

“That episode really burned the trust bridge,” University of Kentucky’s Erin Haynes told the outlet. “They came back like they were told they could, and that testing was done after the fact with poor equipment.”

In addition to the collapse of value in property prices, residents have reported a range of symptoms following the derailment fallout, including mysterious rashes, coughs, sore throats, nosebleeds, brain fog, muscle pain, and asthma. 

Amanda Kiger, the executive director of River Valley Organizing, an Ohio-based community group working on behalf of area residents, said that the symptoms locals reported included testing positive for vinyl chloride.

“We have folks with lung scarring. We have folks with rashes … And one of the things that bothers us the most is that these things are happening outside of that 1-mile radius that they are considering the ‘contamination zone,’” she said. 

“East Palestine was ground zero, but the impact of the explosion has far-reaching, multi-state repercussions,” Kiger added.

The White House declined to say whether Biden would drink water in East Palestine during his first trip to the Appalachian area one year after the disaster, saying it would not “get into some sort of political stunts about drinking water.” Biden was met with a chilly response from residents during his trek to the village last year, including crowds of Make America Great Again protesters holding messages such as “Go home, sleepy Joe!” and “F*** Biden.”

JD VANCE RETURNS TO SCENE OF EAST PALESTINE TRAIN DISASTER: ‘WE WILL NOT FORGET YOU’

In April 2024, Norfolk Southern reached a $600 million settlement with East Palestine residents and businesses who sued for damages stemming from the derailment. 

In January 2025, the company announced it would pay $22 million in settlement payments to the village of East Palestine related to the disaster’s effect on the local government.