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Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment

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Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment

#121

Post by photochemsyn »

acdha wrote: post #116
photochemsyn wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the people working for the EPA didn't want to get downwind of the plume themselves, so they took their air / water samples upwind of the mess, to avoid exposure (and maybe to make things look less bad as well) and called it a day. Really wouldn't be surprising.

Do we have any reason to believe that happened? There’s been training and response plans for this kind of thing going back to the 70s so it seems like that would be a huge scandal.

The EPA's response to the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout - in particular allowing widespread use of Corexit - was pretty scandalous:

https://www.typeinvestigations.org/investigation/2015/04/27/...

I think they also dropped the ball on lead in drinking water supplies across the USA. It's another 'regulatory capture' situation, most likely.

Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment

#122

Post by sangnoir »

UncleMeat wrote: post #114
soundsgoodtome wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. Do you realize that most of us are the shareholders? This is a Fortune 500 company. Most of our 401ks include blended Fortune 500 holdings. I keep hearing this rhetoric around social media… Do people not realize that there is a cost to our retirement funds always having to increase in value?

I think this outcome was unintentional, but in hindsight this feels like the greatest trick megacapitalism ever pulled. A disproportionate amount of equity growth goes to the wealthy but the middle class has also hitched their futures to the stock market through 401ks. This means that "well, grandma's retirement also depends on record corporate profits" is a nearly invincible tactic against anything that diminishes c…

The outcome was not unintentional. The current moves overtures to privatize Social Security will seal the complete subservience of labor to capital. "If our share price drops, retirees will freeze to death on empty stomachs - not even the government can help"

Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment

#123

Post by TomSwirly »

photochemsyn wrote: post #55

Reports seem spotty but five tanker cars full of vinyl chloride, aka chloroethylene is no joke. That's a really nasty monomer (feedstock for making PVC pipe). Once polymerized it's a pretty harmless by all accounts, but the monomer is highly unpleasant (MSDS): Inhalation: Several minutes of exposure to high, but attainable concentrations (over 1000 ppm) may cause difficulty breathing, central nervous system depressio…

> Phosgene is a highly toxic gas that can cause vomiting and breathing trouble,

I'm a mathematician, not a chemist, but I do know about about phosgene.

The memorable thing about phosgene is not that is causes "breathing trouble" but that it will kill you dead, dead, dead, and once you have a lethal dose, there is no effective treatment, and that it's a "linear poison" - small concentrations over hours and days have exactly the same effect as large concentrations for minutes (many poisons don't work that way).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene

Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment

#124

Post by emodendroket »

User23 wrote: post #118
emodendroket wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were actually trying to "steel man" wouldn't you say "policies which make this type of industrial accident more likely" rather than "policies that are bad/you disagree with," which makes it sound childish and random?

I can’t find any evidence of JD Vance supporting such policies in either his platform or his voting record. I don’t think just making things up counts as steel manning. Incidentally, in the USA Congress has delegated the power to regulate rail safety to the Executive branch which last I knew was controlled by the Good Guys. So I’m really at a loss how to show that this has anything to do with a freshman senator in th…

Spending a minute or two on a search I see that, on the basis of his likely environmental policies, he's been endorsed by Andrew Wheeler, formerly of the EPA (https://www.ontheissues.org/domestic/JD_Vance_Environment.ht...). Let's see what he was up to while he was on the EPA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_R._Wheeler#EPA_administ...

What do you know, slashing a bunch of environmental regulations.

Did you come across this in your efforts to figure out how someone could possibly believe Vance would support deregulation on the environment?

Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment

#125

Post by acdha »

photochemsyn wrote: post #121
acdha wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we have any reason to believe that happened? There’s been training and response plans for this kind of thing going back to the 70s so it seems like that would be a huge scandal.

The EPA's response to the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout - in particular allowing widespread use of Corexit - was pretty scandalous: https://www.typeinvestigations.org/investigation/2015/04/27/... I think they also dropped the ball on lead in drinking water supplies across the USA. It's another 'regulatory capture' situation, most likely.

I’m not saying the EPA is perfect but simply asking whether we have reason to believe that this case was due to measurement choices, or if that was simply made up for the sake of argument.

Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment

#126

Post by User23 »

emodendroket wrote: post #124
User23 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t find any evidence of JD Vance supporting such policies in either his platform or his voting record. I don’t think just making things up counts as steel manning. Incidentally, in the USA Congress has delegated the power to regulate rail safety to the Executive branch which last I knew was controlled by the Good Guys. So I’m really at a loss how to show that this has anything to do with a freshman senator in th…

Spending a minute or two on a search I see that, on the basis of his likely environmental policies, he's been endorsed by Andrew Wheeler, formerly of the EPA ( https://www.ontheissues.org/domestic/JD_Vance_Environment.ht... ). Let's see what he was up to while he was on the EPA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_R._Wheeler#EPA_administ... What do you know, slashing a bunch of environmental regulations. Did you com…

That's the best you've got? He was endorsed by someone formerly from an agency that has nothing to do with the US Department of Transportation that regulates trains? That's literally the Bad Guy on team Bad Guys makes Bad Things happen argument I already gave.

If you'd dug even a little you'd see that the classification of these trains at a lower hazard level than probably warranted dates back at least to the Obama administration and probably further. So again, what does this have to do with JD Vance other than the steel man argument I already gave?

Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment

#127

Post by beepbooptheory »

uxp100 wrote: post #76
fassssst wrote: post #24

It’s like people are living through "White Noise" by Don DeLillo. Thanks ChatGPT for helping me remember the book based on the general scenario: "White Noise" is a darkly comic novel that explores themes of death, consumerism, and technology. The story takes place in a small Midwestern town where a poisonous cloud, known as "The Nanny," is hanging over the area and threatening the lives of its residents. The protagon…

The nanny? Anyway, the poisonous cloud is perhaps metaphorically hanging over the town, but only during a short section of the novel is there actually a cloud. Though maybe in terms of pages the cloud isn’t over the town very long, but several weeks pass? This summary is mostly right? I guess?

Its like a summary someone who hasnt read it would make.. Its such a funny thing to ask the chat AI, You can just read the summary the publisher writes!

Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment

#128

Post by UncleMeat »

sangnoir wrote: post #122
UncleMeat wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this outcome was unintentional, but in hindsight this feels like the greatest trick megacapitalism ever pulled. A disproportionate amount of equity growth goes to the wealthy but the middle class has also hitched their futures to the stock market through 401ks. This means that "well, grandma's retirement also depends on record corporate profits" is a nearly invincible tactic against anything that diminishes c…

The outcome was not unintentional. The current moves overtures to privatize Social Security will seal the complete subservience of labor to capital. "If our share price drops, retirees will freeze to death on empty stomachs - not even the government can help"

I'm not sure. 401ks were not an accident when they were introduced, but it doesn't appear that any of their architects intended for them to completely revolutionize and take over the retirement system in the US.

I do agree that now it is an organized effort by capital and that efforts to move social security to a system similar to private 401k accounts (which has been pushed by the right since before W Bush) would absolutely do what you say - seal the complete subservience of labor to capital. I just think that this was an opportunity seized by capital rather than a change planned from the beginning.

Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment

#129

Post by fuzzfactor »

morpheos137 wrote: post #28
throwawaysleep wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there several of these situations ongoing at any given time? It has happened twice near some aunts of mine. Train derailments leaking chemicals do not seem that rare.

Train derailments involving vinyl chloride, a highly toxic, carcinogenic chemical are rare though... Vinyl chloride also known as vinyl monomer is used to make PVC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_chloride

The Vinyl Chloride Monomer is often referred to as VCM.

It is a gas which is liquefied under pressure in a similar way to propane, so tanks and rail cars must be completely airtight at all times.

Otherwise the entire liquid cargo will rapidly be expelled under pressure as a liquid from any opening on the bottom of the vessel, or the entire liquid cargo will still evaporate quite rapidly and eventually all escape as a gas stream through defects or open valves on the top part of the vessel.

Any VCM liquid spilled will act like propane and rapidly turn into a gas which will disperse much wider through the air much more rapidly.

Not much is going to soak into the soil or be carried away by water drainage channels.

If it was an acetone spill or something like that it wouldn't evaporate nearly as fast, nor present as widespread an atmospheric content downwind, and you would have to get a lot closer to the spill to detect the vapors or smell it yourself even for a briskly evaporating liquid like acetone.

But the VCM is not only flammable, it is actually a highly toxic gas.

VCM smells exactly like most brand-new PVC shower curtains, because VCM's exactly what you're smelling in very small concentrations, as any residual monomer often outgasses strongly the first few days after hanging the curtain.

In an unventilated bathroom I would think that's often beyond the recognized working VCM levels allowed in industrial facilities.

Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment

#130

Post by gibspaulding »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #93
mdip wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty common throughout the US, but there's a section of Ohio that I recall driving through which has several cities named for European and Asian countries. I had a girlfriend early in college who's grandmother lived deep in rural Ohio; we visited the area frequently and it involved driving past several. A bit of obscure trivia I learned while down there, "Russia, Ohio" is pronounced like "Roo-She". I was told…

Yeah... Russia. >sigh I’m about 40 miles from Russia, OH. We’ve also got Versailles (pronounced like the “ver” in “verb” and “sales”), Houston (pronounced “house ton”), Lima (long I, like the bean), and Eldorado (long A) all in a 100 mile radius. We have some Native American names for cities and counties, too.

Theres a Vienna in Illinois that the locals pronounce VAI-enna, Mexico Indiana, and of course Notre Dame college, pronounced Noder, then dame like an old married woman.
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