Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 607 posts

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

#291

Post by iso1631 »

RajT88 wrote: post #262
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…

> 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 environmental effects of these sorts of things play out when it's too late for the folks that have been impacted. I recently learned that smaller versions of this even happen in the Lasalle/Peru area in Illinois with some regularity. It makes the local news, and maybe s…

Imagine a world where journalists have enough time in the day to participate in a coverup

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

#292

Post by panick21_ »

I'm not one that usually advocates for nationalization, but with these rail companies, this should be done.

For multiple reason:

- These companies make absurdly huge profit that could be reinvested into the network to improve the network for everybody (electrification, passenger transport). And these are not some complex tech companies that the government couldn't operate.

- These companies are blocking passenger travel and don't care that they are doing it, all other approaches to prevent this have failed. With the current structure there is no change for the US ever to develop a serious passenger rail infrastructure, either inter-city, regional or S-Bahn style. Many local government and states might want to do more train stuff but currently don't feel empowered to do so any trying is often not even worth it.

- They are removing anything not absurdly profitable, shifting things from rail to trucks. And then trucks use government funded road and highway infrastructure instead. Its just bad intensives.

- Current companies have a bad track record and there are way to many derailments, and this is serious strategic concern for logistics that the government should really take better care off.

Just for reference, with the current profit of these companies, the US could easily executed a systematic program of electrification, track and signaling upgrades. Vastly improving both the amount of cargo that can be transported and the passenger that can be transported, and doing so in a much more substantial way.

While trains are energy efficient, and its better then trucks, currently they use very dirty locos with no plan of changing it (some mild greenwashing but nothing real). Some of these train companies are literally some of the largest individual users of fossil fuels (behind things like DoD) and no plan for change anytime soon.

It would also make transporting cargo from city-to-city easier if these cities are currently in the domain of one of the competitor companies. This is a real problem for shipping.

If the US wants to seriously drive modal share of cargo and passenger transport to green energy efficient trains, its the only way I can see it gone work.

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

#293

Post by legitster »

shock-value wrote: post #137
petesergeant wrote: post #91

[flagged]

I don’t know or care what Chinese internal media is reporting — this is a significant story in the U.S. that is getting less play than it should. It’s an ecological disaster with potentially significant health concerns, and likely involves corporate negligence as well as a failure of governance by both political parties who recently forced rail workers back to work despite complaints related to possible causes of thi…

> It’s an ecological disaster with potentially significant health concerns

Counterpoint, we deal with hazardous chemical spills all the time, especially when you factor in all of the semi crashes that don't make headlines. There is a very robust set of clean up procedures set aside for these chemicals ahead of time, and they are being followed. What we are watching now are the automatic precautions of our system kicking in as intended - like taking soil and water samples and testing air quality.

The system is working as intended - we only think it's a disaster because we are being told it is on social media. And often the evidence of the system working is being used to argue it's not.

Outsider efforts that seek to undermine these efforts or make big deals of the mundane should be taken with a grain of salt for the same reason ballot recounts shouldn't be proof that our election process is broken.

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

#295

Post by LarryMullins »

shadowgovt wrote: post #179
perihelions wrote: post #7

- "On Sunday, the EPA released a list, written by Norfolk Southern, of the toxic chemicals that were in the derailed cars. In addition to vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate, it mentions ethylhexyl acrylate, which can cause headaches, nausea, and respiratory problems in people exposed to it; as well as isobutylene, which can make people dizzy and drowsy." This is anodyne phrasing that omits the lede, which is that this…

In general, there's no particular need to make the list of chemicals public. In the event of emergency, every container is stamped with one or two standard labels indicating the nature of the chemical threat and what firefighters need to do to address it; otherwise, it's as important to people as what's in the tractor-trailer in front of them on the highway. It might be worth having a discussion about the fact that t…

> In general, there's no particular need to make the list of chemicals public

Fitting username, I didn't realize you were a novelty account.

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

#297

Post by mkr-hn »

snozolli wrote: post #236
ska wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so is "grow wary", which is the potential problem.

"Grow wary" isn't a thing. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=grow+weary%2Cg...

Always remember to mind the y-axis and scale when looking at and thinking about graphs. They can be deceptive even without meaning to.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=grow+wary&year...

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

#298

Post by alexandre_m »

mrguyorama wrote: post #233
lm28469 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not completely unreported but compare it to the few balloons you guys popped in the last week that made international news it's weird. Especially since these balloons are 99.9% mass hysteria

One is about global geopolitical games and a possible upcoming war in the next few decades. The other is a local environmental disaster. There's a national angle in pointing out this is exactly what the rail unions told us would happen but is even Fox News reporting on that?

> is even Fox News reporting on that?

There was a segment by Hannity and Tucker Carlson about this yesterday which I found on Youtube.

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

#299

Post by TurkishPoptart »

RajT88 wrote: post #262
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…

> 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 environmental effects of these sorts of things play out when it's too late for the folks that have been impacted. I recently learned that smaller versions of this even happen in the Lasalle/Peru area in Illinois with some regularity. It makes the local news, and maybe s…

Better to be a labelled conspiracy wingnut, as someone who maintains justified suspicion of those who hold power in our society (media, corporate barons, politicians), than to be too trusting and assuming all is well.

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

#300

Post by badrequest »

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…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN