The Environmental Protection Agency’s response to the disastrous 2023 East Palestine train derailment will be investigated after local residents of the small town on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border and Vice President JD Vance pressed for the review.

The inspector general of the EPA announced the investigation Tuesday to assess the agency’s response to the worst rail disaster in more than a decade and the subsequent health and environmental concerns that have developed despite the EPA’s assurances to the public that no toxic levels of chemicals lingered in the community weeks and months later.

An assortment of chemicals spilled and caught fire after the failed bearing sent the Norfolk Southern train careening off the tracks late one Friday night in February 2023.…