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Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

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Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#191

Post by shadowgovt »

gwright wrote: post #123
nimbius wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can make people dizzy and drowsy LMFAO vinyl chloride is a multi-organ carcinogen...its literally one of the quickest ways to stage 4 right up there with Benzene exposure. phosgene was also part of the release when Ohio decided a "controlled burn" of the vinyl chloride was somehow a good idea. the plume could be seen from commercial flights. honest to god the damage control media outlets are attempting in the midst…

> honest to god the damage control media outlets are attempting in the midst of what by every definition is just under a massive environmental disaster is just ridiculous. If this happened in China it would be front page news. Is it damage control or just some strange calculation that it isn't a story that will attract page views? Both rationales are concerning, but they suggest different pathologies in our media eco…

It's honestly that there's not much story because it looks worse than it is.

Chemicals are counter-intuitive. People don't have a good match for looks-scary to is-scary.

I watch the Checmical Safety Board incident report videos from time-to-time. The most common killer in chemical plants? Carbon monoxide: odorless, colorless, tasteless, and simply displaces oxygen. You climb into an enclosed space, have just enough time to realize something's wrong (maybe) before you pass out, and never wake up. The methyl isocyanate that killed in Bhopal rolled along the ground creating a silent blanket of death.

A giant black plume climbing into the cloud layer is scary looking but in no way correlated, one way or another, with the actual risk to public safety. Made for great 6 o'clock news footage, but the followup story really is just "Clean the soot off your house and maybe check your basement for any chemical that rolled away before it burned."

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#192

Post by notch898a »

slantedview wrote: post #97
pdabbadabba wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason people are so upset isn't necessarily because of the environmental impact, it's because the people who work on these trains have been warning things like this could happen for years, and when they tried to strike over it, the federal government stepped in and crushed them into submission. I've seen a few people say this. I'm sympathetic to the rail workers but, what's the evidence that this derailment ha…

> what's the evidence that this derailment had anything to do with the attempted rail workers strike? AFAIK, the primary issue there was sick leave--and, generally, a more humane work schedule. The workers had many other complaints, including companies forcing workers to drive dangerously long trains with a single person staffing it. That seems absolutely relevant when you have a train car burning and nobody notices.

If you drive a vehicle knowing it is unsafe shouldn't you refuse? Any other vehicle and we would hold the worker accountable for not refusing such a negligent order.

The news articles about the rail workers complaining it was unsafe seems to show they are complicit as they continued operating in unsafe conditions anyway.

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#193

Post by Spooky23 »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #148
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't see a lot of people talking about this disaster getting no coverage Oh my god this is the only thing people are talking about. Please don’t do this. Let’s talk about the actual disaster instead of spinning up another useless whirlpool of meta-debate.

No it’s not? There’s one measly story way down past the fold on the NYT homepage. It’s nowhere on the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal or USA Today homepages (I cmd+F’d). There’s a tiny clip on the left of the Fox News homepage that’s tangentially about it but really about Tomi Lahren bashing Pete Buttigieg. The most prominent is the New York Post, which has a headline about it being “worse than feared” after a b…

It’s since moved further down. Mike Pompeo is angry about balloons, which is clearly more important.

There’s probably some political issue around the incident.

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#194

Post by vkou »

anotherman554 wrote: post #165
jsonne wrote: post #67

I've been seeing content on Tiktok where even 100 miles away they're seeing small dead fish which is apparently according to the folks making the videos a massive red flag. In general I grow super weary of companies and the government downplaying these sorts of things. It seems to constantly follow the pattern of people saying "It's not that bad" and then only years later do we actually see the horrific health and en…

"I've been seeing content on Tiktok where even 100 miles away they're seeing small dead fish which is apparently according to the folks making the videos a massive red flag." I wouldn't bother watching a Tiktok video unless the video maker is an environmental professional. Otherwise this is just the blind leading the blind. Here's a legal definition of environmental professional used by developers when they do a envi…

You are correct about that, but it's also worth noting that there's also no point listening to a corporate press release that's telling you everything is fine, either, because we don't put press officers in prison for lying.

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#195

Post by lm28469 »

sschueller wrote: post #188
lm28469 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like 911's ground zero was safe ;) nothing to see, move along, uh what cancers are you talking about ?? you must be imagining it

There was an asbestos ad [1] featuring the twin towers. How can one expect the air to be safe after we know what asbestos does to you. [1] https://preview.redd.it/8cf7ufrnxlw31.jpg?auto=webp&v=enable...

Yet: "Former EPA head admits she was wrong to tell New Yorkers post-9/11 air was safe"

It's the real world and in the real world you have dozens of entities competing against each-other to get their version to be believed. Same shit with Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The truth doesn't really matter until decades later.

You'll have overly cautious people, overly pessimistic people, overly optimistic people, straight up lying to cover their asses people, &c.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/10/epa-head-wro...

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#196

Post by mindslight »

ajross wrote: post #73
Workaccount2 wrote: post #15

Before everyone loses there mind, because this story has oddly been on blast 2 weeks after the incident: VC is a gas a room temperature. None of the VC cars were ruptured in the crash. They were vented and ignited by workers to avoid explosion. Burning VC produces carbon oxides, HCl, phosgene, and formaldehyde. HCl, Phosgene become hydrochloric acid in the atmosphere. The total amount of hydrochloric acid this could…

This take needs more coverage. In fact the current freakout is almost entirely due to the deliberate burn and the big plume it caused, with almost no one taking the time to explain that the combustion products are simply much safer than the products that were leaking. But everyone wants to cover how it smells in East Palestine and not what the options were. (And to everyone replying with "But it's ACTUALLY about the…

The ultimate problem is the breakdown in trust of our institutions to get this right - the overriding incentives are wrong at every level. Burning a product because it would have otherwise needed to be recovered and transported under pressure seems like exactly the kind of amoral tradeoff a company would take, not particularly caring about the combustion products apart from what they can legally get away with.

As far as the actual technicals, your assertion that "the combustion products are simply much safer than the products that were leaking" would seem to just be the opposing take in a fact-free debate. First, combustion products have been dispersed in the air. And second, with large quantities of anything, trace amounts of impurities or other combustion products become significant.

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#197

Post by shadowgovt »

Julesman wrote: post #108

I see a lot of these responses starting with "The reason." I don't see many people talking about institutional bias. I don't see a lot of people talking about this disaster getting no coverage while the media is stuck on shooting down balloons. I don't see many people talking about the fact that if this was anywhere close to wealthy people that it would have been headline news. I don't see many talking about the abso…

> This is a total disaster that will impact the health of people in the area for generations.

[citation needed]. Vinyl chloride breaks down quickly (especially when it's all set on fire) and doesn't bio-accumulate. That's why the OSHA standards for it are for career-long exposure. Its byproducts are also pretty volatile and should burn through biology and dilute quickly.

There's no 4-alarms here because it's not a 4-alarm situation. It's a disaster, but one of the more well-understood and easier-to-contain ones.

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#198

Post by unethical_ban »

jasonlotito wrote: post #156
unethical_ban wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, I don't see government ownership of society-critical industries with no opportunity for competition to be crazy. Tell me how you'd spin up a competing national rail line network.

It's not worth replying. "Is this a joke?" is not asking if it's a joke. It's an worthless insult. Nothing more.

Agreed they were low effort, so I put in little as well.

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#199

Post by aednichols »

slantedview wrote: post #105
falcolas wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cause was an overheated wheel bearing melting and dislodging the axle, causing a derailment. The overheating was detected, and ignored. The quote is, as I recall, "The next sensor will detect it if it's a problem." Could the electric brakes have helped? Not sure in this specific case. In other cases? Probably. Air brakes are remarkably cool technology (how the valves work still boggles me from time to time) but t…

There were more factors to this derailment than the ones you mention. In recent years train companies have forced longer trains than ever to be driven by a single worker, the sort of thing that would make it hard to notice a train car is on fire. They've also forced train car inspections, the sort of thing that might catch a faulty bearing, to be done faster than ever, in the push for endlessly increasing profits. Th…

Noticing defects while underway has been automated by trackside detectors for decades, ever since the removal of the caboose and associated crewman. In this case, we know the detector went off as designed, and what happened - or did not happen - next was the problem.

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#200

Post by dsfyu404ed »

colpabar wrote: post #87
Workaccount2 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not denying the accident was bad, I'm tempering an unwarranted level of hysteria for what is another small scale industrial accident. People are drumming up hysteria for political capital, but its not fair to people who live in Ohio or Pennsylvania and now think they can't use their water, they're doomed to cancer at 45, and their kids will be mutants. It's being blown way of of proportion to the reality of it. I…

> People are drumming up hysteria for political capital, but its not fair to people who live in Ohio or Pennsylvania and now think they can't use their water, they're doomed to cancer at 45, and their kids will be mutants. Can you show me a single comment on this website and not on reddit that is saying those things? Also, did you know that the EPA also said that all the dust in the air on 9/11 was perfectly safe? I…

>Can you show me a single comment on this website

Ask and ye shall receive, from this very thread:

> This is a total disaster that will impact the health of people in the area for generations.[1]

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34791609

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