East Palestine train derailment polluted 16 states, study says

When it began to rain in various places, the pollutants were pushed from the air and deposited on the ground. The National Atmospheric Deposition Program, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, collects these ground depositions weekly across 260 sites across North America. David Gay, who serves as coordinator of the program, routinely analyzes the data to monitor air pollutants. “If you have a lot of pollution in the atmosphere, you get a lot of wet deposition pollution at the ground,” Gay said.