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

501–510 of 607 posts

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

#501

Post by MrOwnPut »

TylerE wrote: post #406
gowings97 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the train initiated a stop, the axle broke, and they did not stop in time? Why did they initiate the stop? First I've heard of this. *Update - NTSB is saying it was bearing failure - https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20230214.as... ctrl+f for 'axle' or 'brake' from the NTSB statement - zero results

What do you think the bearing is containing?

That doesn't mean it was the brake. The bearing contains the brake. The axle contains the bearing. The train contains the axle.

Not enough information to determine what caused the bearing to fail, bearing failures account for 5.9% of all train derailments[1].

Though we can look at common train bearing failures to get a likelihood...

Most likely it was a simple lack of maintenance. It's possible to prevent this with more sensors[2] and tighter maintenance checks.

[1] https://www.wisnerbaum.com/blog/2016/september/the-most-comm...

[2] https://www.southampton.ac.uk/engineering/research/projects/...

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

#502

Post by corbulo »

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…

>If you bet on the scientific majority around climate change being wrong / non-existent / something we can't control, and end up being wrong, then the worst case scenario we make the planet uninhabitable (I'm going to the extreme here).

Have you heard of Pascals wager? What do you think of it?

The problem with your 2nd part is it hasn't been actually shifting away from oil, just shifting where in the chain uses more of it. 'Green' infrastructure and products are still overwhelmingly powered by oil & coal and require such significant amounts of emissions to extract that it is self-defeating in the majority of cases. The strongest advocates of 'Green' energy have been frequently silent on Nuclear Energy, which is an obvious and much easier solution to their own alarmism than wind farms (have you seen local eco impacts and blade disposal?) solar (works only where it's sunny with limited options for power storage which is its own can of worms).

>For something more immediate like health concerns with this derailment, is should the officials be more willing to be wrong? And message as such?

I think transparency is what is being requested, not wrongness.

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

#503

Post by shadowgovt »

kurthr wrote: post #265
qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally, what can these chemicals react into when in a blaze.

There's a small amount of phosgene, but mostly nothing worse than when they started (which are fairly nasty). Lot's of CO and CO2, but it's the liquid runoff that's more concerning. It'll be a haz-waste site for decades.

Vinyl chloride degrades in air 99% in 100 days and doesn't bio-accumulate.

It'll be a source of 14-CO2 for about a year, tops.

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

#504

Post by MrOwnPut »

onetimeusename wrote: post #472
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.

Would ECP brakes have stopped this, a serious question? I don't know if the severity of this warrants blame on a lack of ECP braking. There is a study done[1] that compared different pneumatic vs electronic signal brakes and ECP brakes could have potentially reduced the number of cars in a derailment but I don't know if it's a significant decrease in cars that are derailed, 50 cars derailed. It does not seem that way…

No it would not have, as another posted, the NTSB has reported this was a bearing failure[1].

Bearing failures account for 5.9% of all train derailments[2].

It's possible to help prevent this (not fully as many things derail trains) with more sensors[3] and tighter maintenance checks.

This was most likely due to a lack of maintenance.

[1] https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20230214.as...

[2] https://www.wisnerbaum.com/blog/2016/september/the-most-comm...

[3] https://www.southampton.ac.uk/engineering/research/projects/...

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

#505

Post by JackFaker »

WalterBright wrote: post #468
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

With an all-powerful government running things, you get Chernobyl.

This isn't a fair or useful comparison. The USSR was a command and control political and economic system which creates a kind of capture in decision making that is meaningfully different from what we encounter in the U.S. To put it simply, they got Chernobyl and the U.S. got three mile island which is a very different kind of nuclear (and governmental) failure.

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

#506

Post by eggy »

TylerE wrote: post #406
gowings97 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the train initiated a stop, the axle broke, and they did not stop in time? Why did they initiate the stop? First I've heard of this. *Update - NTSB is saying it was bearing failure - https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20230214.as... ctrl+f for 'axle' or 'brake' from the NTSB statement - zero results

What do you think the bearing is containing?

Containing? Discs for braking are mounted and fixed to the axle. Bearings allow for rotation of the axle and are offset from the disc brake mount and constrained on other axes. I don't know what kind of train or brake system was used on this train, so I can't speak to whether brakes or Donald Trump ;) are to blame for this.

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

#507

Post by antod »

WalterBright wrote: post #468
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

With an all-powerful government running things, you get Chernobyl.

Seems to me that the power of government or lack thereof is far less a factor than the nature of that government (eg corruption or other self serving tendencies) when it comes to man made disasters.

There are enough examples of man made disasters in countries with weak governments, and powerful governments without a history of these kinds of disasters.

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

#508

Post by yunwal »

shadowgovt wrote: post #500
yunwal wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 be…

> This isn't a mystery chemical; we've been working with the stuff since 1835, we've spilled it into the environment numerous times

It has never been burned at anywhere near this quantity. There are other chemicals that can react with it. Your strawmanning isn't winning you any points here.

> What is your goal...

I would like for these coverups to lose their effectiveness. I'd like for executives that gamble with human lives and the environment to be held responsible. I would like politicians and media organizations that repeatedly enable them to lose credibility. I would like the concerns of railroad workers to be taken seriously. I'd like for journalists to not be wrongfully arrested for doing their jobs. I'd like for the safety precautions for carrying hazardous materials to be enforced. I'd like to have institutions that I can more or less trust to tell me the truth.

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

#509

Post by TylerE »

MrOwnPut wrote: post #501
TylerE wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the bearing is containing?

That doesn't mean it was the brake. The bearing contains the brake. The axle contains the bearing. The train contains the axle. Not enough information to determine what caused the bearing to fail, bearing failures account for 5.9% of all train derailments[1]. Though we can look at common train bearing failures to get a likelihood... Most likely it was a simple lack of maintenance. It's possible to prevent this with m…

No, you e got it backwards. The train contains the bogey which contains the bearing which contains the axle.

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

#510

Post by georgeg23 »

MrOwnPut wrote: post #504
onetimeusename wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would ECP brakes have stopped this, a serious question? I don't know if the severity of this warrants blame on a lack of ECP braking. There is a study done[1] that compared different pneumatic vs electronic signal brakes and ECP brakes could have potentially reduced the number of cars in a derailment but I don't know if it's a significant decrease in cars that are derailed, 50 cars derailed. It does not seem that way…

No it would not have, as another posted, the NTSB has reported this was a bearing failure[1]. Bearing failures account for 5.9% of all train derailments[2]. It's possible to help prevent this (not fully as many things derail trains) with more sensors[3] and tighter maintenance checks. This was most likely due to a lack of maintenance. [1] https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20230214.as... [2] https://www…

In another universe, ECP brakes would have saved the day. It sounds like the Trump administration still deserves criticism for decaying train safety.
Post reply on HN