I live near East Palestine. After the derailment, my head aches with anxiety and vinyl chloride.

On Feb. 4, I received an emergency notification on my iPhone about a derailed train in East Palestine, Ohio, urging residents within a one-mile radius of the accident to evacuate. I was eating a late lunch in my parents’ sunny kitchen when a quick Google search showed my exact location to be 16 miles from the area. Not yet understanding the gravity of the situation that would follow, I continued my homebody routines.

In the days after the East Palestine derailment, our neighborly small talk was completely saturated with doubt about our air and water quality. Even on Instagram, I remember liking a post from a pregnant woman I knew from high school covering her windows in Saran Wrap in an attempt to create a safe, sterile bubble for the unborn baby.

» READ MORE: Norfolk Southern CEO bringing apology, aid to Senate hearing

It’s customary in my rural Western Pennsylvania county to joke about the microplastic pellets swimming in our lungs and the toxic waste floating in our waterways. We’re proud to be surviving these atrocities in the most apathetic sense.

The persistent, nagging headache I had been ignoring suddenly fell into context as I swallowed two ibuprofen; my throbbing temples were equal parts internalized environmental anxiety as possibly vinyl chloride.

I grew up in Beaver, Pa., so close to the Shippingport Atomic Power Station that I would hear emergency sirens echo up over the hill while I played in my backyard. My grade schools and my high school were both equipped with iodine pills to protect against the radiation and a strategic evacuation plan in the event of disaster.

During my college years, a Shell ethane cracker plant moved in along the Ohio riverfront just seven miles away from my childhood home, billowing smokestacks into the air and illuminating the sky with orange haze. The lush green forest that I grew up watching as a blur from the back seat car window has since been flattened under concrete.

I’m not a scientist, political analyst, or sociologist, but I am an observant, educated woman who notices a pattern of big business putting my rural community in harm’s way — eerily similar to its careless attitudes toward low-income communities and communities of color.

I believe that systemic racism is why the town of Midland, Pa., sits less than two miles from the Shippingport power plant, endangering its residents, of whom 11% are Black — a high percentage compared with surrounding areas.

Capitalistic profit is why the Shell ethane plant masked its humanitarian and environmental risks with promises of a booming local economy during its 2012 inception. During its first months of operation last year, the plant was already sued for violating both federal and state air quality standards.

What these instances have in common with the East Palestine train derailment is that harmful environmental circumstances seem to be preferably experimented with in blue-collar communities. In doing so, big businesses are suggesting that, in the event of calamity, these lives are more expendable than those of wealthy suburbs.

Local journalists have been arrested for reporting the disaster, and Norfolk Southern has tried to buy off residents in exchange for their compliance as the news cycle already shifts its focus from East Palestine. The truth is that this is not the first time the greed of big business has compromised Americans and the environment (Flint, Mich.’s water crisis, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, just to name a few); this is just another alarming case of it.

While we all wait for environmental and humanitarian justice these coming weeks, months, and years, I’ll be hoping that those in power choose to take responsibility for this crisis.

Jordan Stovka is a Pittsburgh-based writer and illustrator passionate about reporting the arts, culture, and societal criticism. Her reflective writing style has been published by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, District Fray Magazine, and Baltimore Magazine, and she posts weekly essays to her Substack “More Than A Feeling.” You can connect with her on Instagram: @jordanstovka