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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

#381

Post by briantakita »

olivermarks wrote: post #369
gnulinux wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 'climat…

Climate Change & the war on CO2 has sucked the oxygen out of the room wrt pollution with dangerous chemicals. Many in the environmental community are optimizing a single metric, CO2 emissions, & not focusing on the myriad of chemicals that cause widespread ecological damage. That coupled with the ongoing doomsday hysteria over CO2, it is easy to lose focus on pressing issues & the complexities in dealing with these other environmental issues. The core tension here is should we narrow focus on a single metric or widen focus on the entire system? Also, Que bono for the different approaches?

Instead of focusing so much on CO2, it would benefit humanity to adopt a more well rounded approach that addresses all pollutants, prioritizing the safe handling of extremely toxic chemicals & reducing the amount of toxic waste emitted by industry. Also, it would be helpful to take the approach that novel substances should be proven safe instead of assuming these substances are safe until proven unsafe.

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

#382

Post by notch898a »

c1ccccc1 wrote: post #256
notch898a wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Any other vehicle and we would hold the worker accountable for not refusing such a negligent order. Say the worker refuses that order and their boss says "okay, you're fired". Would we also give that worker legal protection? Would we also hold accountable the higher ups who gave that order and set the policies for how trains are to be run? If not, then you now understand why the accident happened.

>Would we also give that worker legal protection?

Yes I believe that's exactly what is to happen. See this explicitly spelled out https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/mou/2012-07-16 .

I've worked in goods transport in interstate navigable waterways and we had the same thing, literally anyone can "stop work" for unaddressed imminent dangerous conditions and are protected against retaliation. Even if the protection fails it is better my own family starve to death than to poison an entire city; just following orders isn't an excuse (and in any case, such a company of such character company would fire you after the wreck).

note: not legal advice

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

#383

Post by mminer237 »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #186
wilsonnb3 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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’ve seen hundreds of comments and posts with this sentiment on Reddit, including some that made it to the top of r/all. Usually they say something like “why aren’t major media outlets covering this?” while linking to CNN or CBS or some other major media outlet that is in fact covering the…

It was the better part of a week before it got any coverage beyond local news. That's what people are pissed off about. It probably wouldn't have gotten the coverage it did as quick as it did if some uppity cop didn't rough up some uppity reporter giving the media an axe to grind.

It had articles on Reuters[1] and CNN[2] within a day.

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/train-derailment-causes-mas...

[2]: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/04/us/east-palestine-ohio-train-...

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

#384

Post by notthemessiah »

legitster wrote: post #293
shock-value wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kick…

You must live on another planet if you think we have a good record on cleaning up hazardous spills, in an era where oil wells that can't be plugged continue to bleed into our oceans. Most cleanup operations are matters of triage, we almost never are able to undo the damage, in the best case scenarios, ecosystems are able to recover over time, but in many places, ecological damage might as well be permanent. Entropy is not to be trifled with.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/taylor-energy-oil-spill-gulf-of...

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

#385

Post by danaris »

olivermarks wrote: post #369
gnulinux wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 'climat…

You really don't see there being a very distinct difference between the beliefs of the left and right wings of American politics on this?

You think "global oligarchy" is "apolitical", at a time when the right wing is pushing harder and harder for the very wealthy to, essentially, be able to do anything they want, while the left wing (such as it is in this country) is pushing to restrict their power and tax their wealthy?

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

#386

Post by [deleted] »

notch898a wrote: post #192
slantedview wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#387

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

olivermarks wrote: post #369
gnulinux wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 'climat…

One thing on the ontology of capital: once enough capital (billions, trillions) is gathered in one single control point there is a phase transition: from a means towards an end (build X, destroy Y) it becomes a manner of escaping reality: with enough (crony or not) capital you can keep afloat a business no matter how bad it is, how badly run, how useless or how dangerous the products. Not that 'there is no skin in the game', but there is no skin, there is no game anymore.

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

#388

Post by sithadmin »

colpabar wrote: post #29
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…

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. If I can get pulled over for having a busted tail light, a train full of toxic chemicals should get stopped for being on fire.

Unfortunately, a wheel/bearing running hot for ~20 miles could be well inside the usual spacing for defect detector stations[1] in the US. Can't speak for this specific rail line but they're often as far as 30 miles apart, and not every detector will have the sensor package to identify wheel/bearing issues (though most will).

If you ever ride Amtrak, you'll occasionally hear trackside detector units radio in a diagnostic report over the conductors' radios. They have automated voice systems that announce their position, sensor reading states, etc.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defect_detector

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

#389

Post by danaris »

kevin_nisbet wrote: post #349
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…

> 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 environmental effects of these sorts of things play out when it's too late for the folks that have been impacted. This isn't really the same, but I've been thinking in simil…

Unfortunately, the problem here is that for the individual politicians, if you bet that climate change exists, the worst case scenario is that the big money turns against you and you lose office.

If you bet that climate change doesn't exist or can't be fixed, so we might as well go on with the status quo, the worst case is that you get voted out by environmentally-conscious voters...after getting scads of campaign contributions from the big money, and with a good chance of getting a cushy lobbying post from them afterwards.

These are the incentives we need to change.

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

#390

Post by pathartl »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #354
seafoam wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I used to do that. Then I realized that it is always a conspiracy theory until it is too late. If you are potentially impacted, you have to do your own homework, and learn from your mistakes.

I think it is still a good heuristic that most people should follow. Step 1: do I need to have an informed opinion Step 2: Do I need that opinion NOW Step 3: WHAT do I need to know NOW There is a vast amount of conspiracy theorizing that people could avoid by following this approach.

Absolutely. I live in a completely different state and I'm pretty unaffected by this whole tragedy/negligence. I could sit and speculate about what actually happened, but what does that do other than spend energy on something that I'm not actually involved with?
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