West Virginia Governor Jim Justice and his team said on Thursday there are no problems at this time with the drinking water and there is no danger in the air in West Virginia.
The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) says they have been in contact with Ohio River Sanitation Commission, the US EPA and the Ohio EPA on monitoring butyl acrylate that has reached the Ohio River.
The most recent update says the DEP was on site to track the plume, collect samples and the highest concertation observed were below the three parts per billion.
Officials said on Thursday that rain that is coming to West Virginia will add dilution to the chemicals.
West Virginia also said on Thursday that the preliminary monitoring results are well below the provisional health guidance values issued by the US Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry which is 560 parts per billion for drinking water and continues decrease at the plume goes downstream.
West Virginia officials say the chemical substance has not entered any water supply in any affected areas and no water advisories being issued at this time.
The DEP says they are also in contact with the US EPA regarding air monitoring.
The US EPA has not detected any concentrations of contaminants above health advisory levels according to the DEP.
The DEP says they have air monitoring stations in the Northern Panhandle and have not detected any impacts to air quality that came from the Ohio train derailment.
‘I don’t want people to be afraid, I want people to be informed, any resource I have will be deployed,’ said Governor Justice.
Officials said they expect the chemical is traveling in the water about 1 mph and will reach Huntington on Saturday morning and at that point it will take about 10 to 15 miles to get out of the state into Kentucky. This could change though based on weather patterns, according officials.
Regarding the air, officials don’t believe there will be any long term effects from the spill location from their monitors.
