Award-winning ProPublica reporter Topher Sanders has spent the last two years investigating America's aging freight train system. He says the Federal Railroad Administration monitors "less than 1% of what's happening on the rails." Sanders talks about the toxic East Palestine, OH derailment, the prevalence of blocked railroad crossings, and why railway safety legislation is yet to be passed. Also, rock critic Ken Tucker shares three new songs. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
On the Ted radio hour, linguist Ann Curzan says she gets a lot of complaints about people using the pronoun they to refer to one person.
I sometimes get into arguments with people where they will say to me, but it can't be singular.
And I will say, but it is the history behind words causing a lot of debate.
That's on the Ted radio hour from NPR.
This is FRESH AIR.
I'm Tanya Moseley.
This time last year, East Palestine, Ohio, became a household name after 38 freight cars derailed there, igniting a massive chemical fire, releasing vinyl chloride, which is considered a toxin, into the air and water.
Norfolk Southern, a rail system that owns those freight cars, is still cleaning up the environmental damage, and many who live in East Palestine say they've been displaced or are now plagued with health problems.
That derailment has revealed some of the longstanding challenges of America's aging freight railway systems.
It's the subject of a ProPublica series called Train investigating railroad safety in America.
Reporter Topher Sanders has spent the last two years with his colleagues reviewing court and regulatory records of thousands of incidents involving trains.
They've conducted 200 interviews, including conversations with rail workers who describe how, in some instances, railway companies have sidestepped best practices.
In addition to reporting on railroad safety, Topher Sanders was part of a team that covered the Trump administration's family separation policy, for which they won a Peabody award and were finalists for a Pulitzer Prize.
Topher Sanders, welcome to Fresh Air.
Thank you for having me.
The federal Railroad Administration says that last year there were about three train derailments a day in the United States, and most of them are not as catastrophic as the one we saw in Ohio.
But your reporting took up several issues that should make us the growing length of trains, the number of employees managing these long freight trains, and the use of sensors to notify employees of problems.
Before we get to all of that, I'm just curious, how common is it for a train carrying potentially toxic chemicals to actually move through communities like we saw in Ohio?
It's very common.
The freights are incredibly vital to our economic health in this country, and it's part of that healthy economy is the transport of goods, and chemicals are part of that manifest.