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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

#491
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Razor thin margin in the Senate and at least 2 of the "Democrats" are not really going to vote on anything controversial. They have been shills, so far, for business interests.

Are you saying there was no possible way to get railroad safety through?

I'm saying the situation Biden has been in since he took office is very tenuous. There was a virtual tie on paper, with the VP breaking the tie, but 2 of the people on the Dem side were not at all cooperative with the agenda that Biden wanted.

To say "the Dems could have done it if they wanted it" is not at all true.

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

#492
post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they can also directly sample the water to figure out if the HCL levels are dangerous for human consumption or contact, and I've seen no reporting to suggest that is the case But they have not yet done this, and tests are a week out. FEMA hasn't provided food or resources to residents of East Palestine. Churches in Youngstown are traveling en masse to provide any kind of support. There's videos of entire coops…

> There's videos of entire coops of chickens dying out There is currently a rampant bird flu ripping through the US shared between wildlife and farm chickens with a 90%-100% mortality over 48 hours. This is exactly the kind of situation human threat-assessment is bad at. I know experts make mistakes, but replacing expert wisdom with "the guesses of the masses" is a bad idea in general. I don't trust Norfolk Southern,…

> I know experts make mistakes

This is where you're wrong. Experts don't make mistakes in situations like this. They consistently [0] downplay [1] every [2] environmental [3] disaster [4] and withhold information from neutral parties until it loses the public's attention. When are we going to stop acting like this isn't standard operating procedure? When are we going to assume that this is default behavior of people responsible for disasters?

[0] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-toxic-cover-up/

[1] - https://www.history.com/news/chernobyl-disaster-coverup

[2] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-rig-leak-idUSTRE6430A...

[3] - https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/flint-water-crisis/six-mor...

[4] - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/05/california-finds-pge-equipme...

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

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airlines are regulated heavily and safe without nationalizing / seizing ownership.

Airline accidents kill hundreds of people outright. The media gives those stories tons of attention ( If it bleeds, it leads ) and accordingly the airline industry knows it must take safety seriously to protect their profits. Meanwhile the chemical industry kill the gods only know how many thousands of people over the course of decades with a steady trickle of statistically correlated illnesses, but the media doesn't…

Yes I agree, that was my point. Though I was comparing train derailments overall, not chemical spills. Chemicals are needed for society.

Nationalizing trains will not help. Nationalizing chemical transfers won't help either if it's the same EPA in charge that said 9/11 debris was safe or this spill was okay.

Heavier regulations on trains may be needed, especially when transferring hazardous loads, but nationalization would be horrendous.

All that be said, investing in pipelines is a much safer form of transfer for these chemicals. Trains are too risky.

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

#494
post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Climate change' is a hysteria because there is so much money involved in green tech. anyone with an ounce of common sense is an environmentalist, but there have been so many predictions of impending doom (which is your fault, repent and atone for your sins) that the genuinely important issues tend to get buried in the tsunamai of doomy junk science that is drip fed to Guardian readers and anyone else who will listen…

this is vile bullshit - we need to invest trillions to possibly arrest climate change, so yes there will be a lot of money in it for someone.

Apologies for offending your religious beliefs but there are an awful lot of now very rich snake oil salesmen out there who are doing a lot more for their cronies wallets than for the planet.

Be more mindful of where trillions of tax payer money is 'invested' would be my advice and try to see both sides of the religious divide.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11653723/How-Al-Gor...

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

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm finding it extremely hard to separate signal from noise in the social and legacy media spheres right now. I'm waiting for things to settle.

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.

For real. This looks really bad. Authorities in the area seem to be playing it like "it's safe until we have evidence that it's not," but who wants to volunteer to become the evidence?

If you're in that area, it'd be prudent to get out if you're able. It's systemic contamination. You don't get to go back in time for a mulligan if it turns out to be bad.

It's always played down. Nobody ever says "we really fucked up this time so you ought to fend for yourself." It's been, what, 10 days? There's barely coverage, and there's no transparency.

There's still lead in the water in Michigan...

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

#496
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said it's not a thing. It is, in fact, a thing. I've heard it and said it often enough to be sure it's not so uncommon that it's reasonable to say it's not a thing. You also need to keep in mind what Google Ngram is . https://books.google.com/ngrams/info >> "When you enter phrases into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, it displays a graph showing how those phrases have occurred in a corpus of books (e.g., "British E…

It is, in fact, a thing It isn't. "Grow weary of" is a common phrase. "Grow wary of" are words you can put together, but it's not a common phrase. I've already posted all the evidence needed, and I grow weary of this misguided argument.

Your lack of familiarity with the phrase and misunderstanding your own source does not actually prove anything.

Here, I'll give you a head start on doing what I suggested.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22grow+wary%22

That sure looks like a phrase used across a wide range of contexts and unconnected fields, too wide to support any notion that it's obscure. There's even a non-English news outlet using it in its English coverage.

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

#498
post #100
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…

Are you: - weary of these getting downplayed (pron. wee-ree = you are tired of it) - wary of these getting downplayed (pron. way-ray = you are suspicious of it)

Those pronunciation guides confused me a lot before I scanned back, and read the words themselves (trying to ignore the pronunciations I'd already seen!) - so let me proffer:

- weary 'weir[in a river]-(r)ee'

- wary 'wear[clothes]-(r)ee'

Which just goes to demonstrate how weird and multi-sourced English is, doesn't it. And also maybe we just pronounce these very differently (I'm British) - 'way-ray' is way off to me.

I add the '(r)' because being British (and I believe some of the US) an 'r' following a vowel is under-pronounced (in the opinion of some other accent holders), as in 'wear', but not when followed by another (pseudo)vowel, in 'weary' - but that may not be the case for you.

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

#499
post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying there was no possible way to get railroad safety through?

I'm saying the situation Biden has been in since he took office is very tenuous. There was a virtual tie on paper, with the VP breaking the tie, but 2 of the people on the Dem side were not at all cooperative with the agenda that Biden wanted. To say "the Dems could have done it if they wanted it" is not at all true.

Both parties primarily serve the interests of the 0.1%, hence the reduction in safety protections under Trump and the imposition of an unfair contract and the removal of the right to strike under Biden. Got to squeeze out every last fraction of a percent of profit to keep Berkshire Hathaway's stock price up.

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

#500
post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's videos of entire coops of chickens dying out There is currently a rampant bird flu ripping through the US shared between wildlife and farm chickens with a 90%-100% mortality over 48 hours. This is exactly the kind of situation human threat-assessment is bad at. I know experts make mistakes, but replacing expert wisdom with "the guesses of the masses" is a bad idea in general. I don't trust Norfolk Southern,…

> I know experts make mistakes This is where you're wrong. Experts don't make mistakes in situations like this. They consistently [0] downplay [1] every [2] environmental [3] disaster [4] and withhold information from neutral parties until it loses the public's attention. When are we going to stop acting like this isn't standard operating procedure? When are we going to assume that this is default behavior of people…

If you have specific evidence of what exposure to (burned, trace amounts of) vinyl chloride might do, or its denatured byproducts (besides the HCL, which probably killed some fish), feel free to share them. An anecdote about dead chickens isn't that without a causal link (and the current rampant bird flu is a far more likely explanation).

"We don't really know" is simply false. This isn't a mystery chemical; we've been working with the stuff since 1835, we've spilled it into the environment numerous times, and we are decently familiar with it enough that even given experts with vested interests will downplay the risks, I have no reason to believe panic is in order. It's not safe to swim in, I wouldn't spread it on toast, but it's a well-known HAZMAT story with a well-understood mitigation.

While NPR reported there were concerns from citizens, they also went looking for people who would provide causes for concern in their reporting and found none: not only from the rail company (where you wouldn't expect to find them), but from anywhere. The largest concerns expressed were from an OSU professor that said to wash surfaces and look out for low-lying areas. Plenty of chemical experts would have plenty to gain contradicting the party line if the party line were untrue; the fact we don't see them really should indicate in this case that there's (no pun intended) no fire here.

What is your goal in this exchange?

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