CDC team studying East Palestine train derailment fell ill during investigation • Hacker News Board

Re: CDC team studying East Palestine train derailment fell ill during investigation

#141

Post by bregma » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 11:45 AM UTC

Nathanba wrote: post #86

GalenErso wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's not exactly the same situation. "The EPA’s equipment isn’t able to detect lower levels of Butyl Acrylate that can still pose a threat to human health." In Chernobyl, the Soviets had the opposite problem: the maximum concentration their standard equipment could read was far below the real level.

that's a far better problem to have because you'll at least have the indication that you are maxing out your equipment

Integer overflow is real and prevalent. To many times have I seen unchecked overflow return a number much much smaller than expected.

Re: CDC team studying East Palestine train derailment fell ill during investigation

#142

Post by haswell » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 12:05 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #84

haswell wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The death toll at this time during Katrina tells us nothing about what to expect in this completely orthogonal scenario, unless you believe that the mortality associated with a category 5 hurricane plays out on the same timescale as exposure to these particular chemicals. It's simply not a useful analogy. I think it would also be unwise to draw unfounded conclusions about deaths-to-come as if they're some foregone co…

But this is neither the first spill of vinyl chloride nor the first train derailment releasing toxic chemicals. We actually have plenty of data on these kinds of disasters to have a fairly confident model of what to expect.

Has the equivalency of this spill to past spills been established?

I haven’t found anything confirming that this spill is believed to match the characteristics of other spills in such a way that would alleviate concerns.

Re: CDC team studying East Palestine train derailment fell ill during investigation

#143

Post by datavirtue » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 12:26 PM UTC

darth_avocado wrote: post #36

dmix wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People were evacuated for a reason?

And cleared to return? These people got sick doing door to door surveys, meaning people were back at home. This is ridiculous. Even with the above, they are “unsure” if it was related to anything else like “fatigue”. Like come on.

The CDC is awful secretive for a public organization working on public health. Sigh.

Re: CDC team studying East Palestine train derailment fell ill during investigation

#144

Post by shadowgovt » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 1:20 PM UTC

revelio wrote: post #128

shadowgovt wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CDC didn't say masks don't work. They did say cloth masks weren't as effective as N95s.

Oh how quickly we forget. https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cd... March 24, 2020 Even as the coronavirus spreads across the United States — shutting down businesses, sporting events and schools — the CDC’s advice around masking remains unequivocal: Healthy people who do not work in the healthcare sector and are not taking care of an infected person at home do not need to wear masks.

Ah, now that I know what you mean:

Yes, the CDC said masks don't prevent the spread of the virus. They also said it mitigates the spread of the virus, which are both true statements when the number of people wearing masks grows to "most of the country."

Medicine is a statistical science, which a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their heads around the nuances of.

Re: CDC team studying East Palestine train derailment fell ill during investigation

#145

Post by ipaddr » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 1:51 PM UTC

dubcanada wrote: post #137

laserlight wrote: post #136

Can we update the title to be “East Palestine, Ohio”? Otherwise it reads like CDC is involved with chemical warfare allegations in Palestine.

If you're going to go that far, you should add "USA" to it as well. This is a very USA centric forum though, so it's perfectly fine leaving it as it is. A better question is why is a CDC news article on train derailment on hacker news. What part of this article is related to technology or computers? It's just regular news.

Many readers are involved in biosciences and discussing chemical reactions is a hn thing to do.

Re: CDC team studying East Palestine train derailment fell ill during investigation

#146

Post by egberts1 » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 1:55 PM UTC

KennyBlanken wrote: post #53

jollyllama wrote: post #21

Wow, why do bad things happen to all the investigators sent to look into mishaps in Ohio? https://katv.com/news/local/authorities-responding-to-plane-...

> A Little Rock-based environmental consulting firm confirmed that all five people onboard the plane, including the pilot, were members of their company. Not "investigators"...

We will take a redundancy of investigator teams to ensure that government is on the up and up, no?

Re: CDC team studying East Palestine train derailment fell ill during investigation

#147

Post by hedora » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 2:26 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #113

hedora wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immediately before this accident, the rail workers were striking over inadequate safety rules. Multiple trains derailed in East Palistine. Netflix even filmed a documentary about it there. Knowing all that, both parties sided with the railways and voted to force the rail workers back to work. Post accident, audio recordings of a railway supervisor ordering safety inspectors to ignore safety issues were released. Pois…

... except CDC scientists have a reputation independent of the political machine. They have more to lose being branded liars than to gain toeing party lines.

US government agencies have decoupled scientists’ findings from the statements their PR people make. There was a large amount of public complaining about this under George W Bush, but I doubt this was the first or last time an executive branch engaged in a reality / science purge.

The CDC scientists in this case almost certainly came to the obvious conclusion and then properly documented and reported it.

Re: CDC team studying East Palestine train derailment fell ill during investigation

#148

Post by lazide » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 2:46 PM UTC

qbasic_forever wrote: post #45

lazide wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, that’s completely unrealistic. No large scale system (or any system for very long) has zero downtime. What is the overall percentage any train spends derailed?

Not when the consequence of failure for spilling hazardous material is so great! What are you going to agree to next, that nuke plants are allowed a few minutes of core meltdown a year? Get real.

Just because the consequences are severe doesn’t mean it’s possible to avoid them - regardless of the cost.

For instance, plane crashes are far more severe - and still happen relatively frequently despite all effort to stop them.

Re: CDC team studying East Palestine train derailment fell ill during investigation

#149

Post by 4gotunameagain » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 3:01 PM UTC

dubcanada wrote: post #137

laserlight wrote: post #136

Can we update the title to be “East Palestine, Ohio”? Otherwise it reads like CDC is involved with chemical warfare allegations in Palestine.

If you're going to go that far, you should add "USA" to it as well. This is a very USA centric forum though, so it's perfectly fine leaving it as it is. A better question is why is a CDC news article on train derailment on hacker news. What part of this article is related to technology or computers? It's just regular news.

Much much much more people are aware that Ohio is in the USA, while Palestine is in Palestine.

Re: CDC team studying East Palestine train derailment fell ill during investigation

#150

Post by goodSteveramos » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 3:03 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #108

bavell wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, just the toxic combustion byproducts.

Air quality sampling indicates they had dissipated if I understand correctly.

You do not. Even weeks after people were kicked out of the temporary accommodations and told to go back to their homes the smell of chlorine was omnipresent across the town. What congressman Johnson claimed at the townhall was that the levels were safe which appears to be based on acute rather than long-term exposure data.