Concerned citizens of East Palestine asked agencies a variety of train derailment questions still on their minds during Thursday's open house and informational session at East Palestine High School.

"I just want to make sure I'm able to eat my tomatoes and my dog can roll around in the grass and we're safe," said Tamara Freeze of E. Taggart St.

"There are some reports of several chemicals that were in the water, initial reports, we didn't see anything after that," said Tracy Hager of St. Rt. 170. "But then there's some methylene chloride that showed up in some of the last reports and I wanted to know if that was part of the manifest."

Tamara Freeze lives so close to the site, she's wondering if the soil sampling could have taken place on her own property.

"I'm right there," she said. "I was looking at the maps and I saw a bunch of dots right by my house but the maps coagulated a little bit. So, I wasn't sure if they even sampled my house."

"The preliminary results are all showing that the chemical compounds we're looking for in soil are all within normal ranges for urban and rural soils," said Mark Durno, Response Coordinator with the U.S. EPA. 

The EPA told 21 News they've primarily heard questions on the soil sampling they've been conducting for about a week now. They said within that sampling they're testing for dioxins, something the public's been asking for weeks.

"There was so much concern expressed about those chemical compounds, we felt it was important," Durno added. "We looked at the chemistry of the fire. We didn't expect to see high levels and the results we're seeing so far indicate that's probably the case." 

110 properties have seen soil sampling and 1/3 of the results have come in. The EPA plans to inspect 80-100 properties in this round of tests.

Durno said they plan to move on to collecting 5-10 more samples after this initial round. 

"If we see anything unusual like ash or soot, we'll collect some more samples," Durno added. 

The EPA and Norfolk Southern tell 21 News they've conducted separate samples to ensure accurate data.

"We're also collecting what we call split samples, duplicates of the samples that the company is collecting to make sure that their samples are matching our samples," Durno said. "The soil sampling was one of the tactics we ordered Norfolk Southern to do. We've been overseeing every step of their work."

This comes as nearly 8,442 tons of contaminated soil and over 7.8 million gallons of wastewater have been removed from the village.

Norfolk Southern has successfully removed the impacted water for the derailment site, removed waste soil for the site, and removed the track from the South track. They are in the process of removing tracks from the North track and excavating the soil from under both tracks. 

The Columbiana County Health District said they've sampled over 200 private wells in the village and they are seeing fewer requests as the days move on.