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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

#361

Post by gowings97 »

e40 wrote: post #341
nabla9 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legislation passed under President Obama required trains carrying hazardous flammable materials to have ECP brakes. The law was rescinded in 2017 by the Trump administration.

Agreed. 1. Let's not pretend that this was a "crazy" Trump move. Any Republican would have done this. 2. Let's stop pretending both parties are the same. Yes, there are places where they overlap, but there are important places where there is NO overlap. Environmental action is the big area where there is little to no overlap.

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

#362

Post by pphysch »

prof-dr-ir wrote: post #351
johndevor wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NYT does not have this barely at all. There should be a giant picture of the mushroom cloud on their front page to reflect the severity (potential or real) of the situation. It's shameful.

I think that it is the NYT's policy to not put giant pictures of potential disasters on their front page to avoid being sensationalist. I would not fault you for disagreeing with that style. Most importantly I think that it risks missing important events: at first they are either not verified (or not verified to be important, like here) and a few days later they are no longer newsworthy. But at least it seems that th…

avoid being sensationalist?

The Chinese spy-on-the-weather balloon debacle is the textbook definition of sensational yellow journalism. NYT has had constant front-page coverage of it.

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

#363

Post by LarryMullins »

sam0x17 wrote: post #317
shawn-butler wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my mind because Biden/Buttigieg had Congress impose a labor contract to prevent a strike a few months ago and rail safety due to labor cuts by these same rail companies was one of the issues workers were concerned about?

Yeah anything short of meeting the strikers demands is insane. I still can't believe that's not what went down. These are possibly some of the most important workers in the country, and they can't even get sick days.

It sure does seem weird that something as fundamentally efficient as trains are supposedly so hard to run economically that treating workers properly just isn't economically feasible.

Of course it is feasible, but the transit corps are only interested in maximizing profit and the government backs them up. They could run these trains with 10x the crew, with full top-tier benefits, and still turn a sustainable profit. But right now these companies are being run as paperclip maximizers and merely sustainable profit isn't good enough for them.

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

#364

Post by Workaccount2 »

badrequest wrote: post #300
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…

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There probably already is

250,000 gallons (if it was 10 cars and all 10 converted perfectly to HCl, and all of it went into the water supply) into a water table of, lets be conservative with 10 billion gallons, is 0.00002% concentration or .02ppm

Compare this to your stomach, which has an hydrochloric acid concentration of 5000ppm.

So yes, I would have no issue with it. All the water you drink mixes with a much higher concentration of HCl every time you drink it.

Like I said, their is a hysteria building around this and a total lack of nuance and understanding.

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

#365

Post by fifteenforty »

Weird comment about masks not working for vinyl chloride. Whilst it’s true that a particulate filtering mask (N95) isn’t enough, you can definitely get some protection from an organic vapour cartridge fitted to a reusable respirator. See https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/19...

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

#366

Post by themitigating »

pessimizer wrote: post #163
themitigating wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know the crash was the result of missing regulations? Republicans are against government regulations,you know "big government" and all that, so why would they do a better job?

Democrats are against government regulation, they worship B. Clinton and he deregulated everything. Both US parties, as usual, support regulation that damages the other party's prospects or damages the competitors of their own donors.

False equivalence

Clinton was president in the 90s, prove he removed more regulations than Republicans, finally Republicans are the only ones who compalin about regulations

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

#367

Post by robotbikes »

xhrpost wrote: post #254
colpabar wrote: post #29

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. There was a car on that train that was on fire for at least 20 miles before the derailment. If I can get pulled over fo…

> There was a car on that train that was on fire for at least 20 miles before the derailment Do you have a link talking about this? Any timeline I read online just mentions the derailment around 9p, nothing about a car fire prior to derailment. Thanks.

This article has information and various photos from security cameras showing the sparks coming off of the car prior to the derailment - https://unicornriot.ninja/2023/like-the-doors-of-hell-were-o...

Also DemocracyNow! has been covering the disaster the last two days featuring interviews with both local residents and railway workers.

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

#368

Post by TylerE »

gowings97 wrote: post #357
nabla9 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legislation passed under President Obama required trains carrying hazardous flammable materials to have ECP brakes. The law was rescinded in 2017 by the Trump administration.

Fair point, but from what I've read the preliminary cause identified pertains to an axle (not braking) issue?

The idea is that you stop quicker, before the axle actually fails.

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

#369

Post by olivermarks »

gnulinux wrote: post #337
AutumnCurtain wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Anything involving government really. This is the decades old "starve the beast" [1] mindset. Let's make sure government is absolutely ineffective at every step of the way, and then later point out how ineffective the government is and propose an even more ineffective, under-resourced government. It's a vicious cycle, and a self-fulfilled prophecy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

The argument against hyper capitalism causing more and more derailments is credible if you look into 'precision scheduled railroading' practices, aka shaving expense by eliminating unnecessary costs and 'optimizing Assets'.

Sadly this has little to do with 'conservatives' or 'the left' and a lot more to do with our apolitical global oligarchy who own the politicians in power and many lobbying groups including 'climate change' and environmentalists who are strangely silent on this major disaster as they were when the Nord Stream pipeline was destroyed.

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

#370

Post by legitster »

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…

It's listed as a "possible carcinogen". Which would put it in the same category as caffeine.

Although it's worth noting that while caffeine would obviously not be that dangerous of a chemical, a giant spill of it would still be an environmental issue.

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