Earlier quoted context omitted.
West of the applachians, east of the rockies. Midwest.
I always thought west of the Mississippi was Midwest.
(Rockies, Mississippi River) == Great Plains States?
Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment
131–136 of 136 posts
Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States - The Background section has the explanation. I've always understood it as a sort of historical anchoring bias. Compared to the areas that were settled during colonial times, Ohio was indeed "West" in people's minds, just less so than the Pacific coast.
Wild. Learned something.
For a while there, the Mississippi river was the western extent of the USA.
In places like Ohio, you were midway there.
Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Context from another article: > Cars involved in the derailment contained vinyl chloride, combustible liquids, butyl acrylate, benzene residue cars (railroad cars that previously contained benzene,” the release stated, “and nonhazardous materials such as wheat, plastic pellets, malt liquors and lube oil.”
Some lube oils are extremely toxic when burned. And there may be reactions between the various chemicals and their degradatoon products. Portable detectors will not be able to detect or quantify many of those. Only more advanced methods like Raman, gas and liquid chromatography with various detectors and mass spectrometry can tell more. And I have yet to see a report using any of those.
>butyl acrylate
Affectionately known as Brutal Acrylate.
In scientific terminology, that's some nasty smelling shit. Toxic too.
If there's enough of it spilled you could smell minuscule amounts a mile away easier than an instrument could get a valid reading though.
It's one of those.
The odor threshold of volatile acrylates is orders of magnitude lower than other flammable toxic chemicals like methanol, but the instrumental detectability of acrylates is not really any more sensitive than regular low-odor chemicals by comparison.
IOW the instrument is better at detecting low-odor chemicals than your nose is, but your nose is more sensitive to things that have a very strong characteristic odor like acrylates.
Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 a…
No, the point was it took me minutes to find and you didn't really care to find an answer as much as you pretended.
Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which group of the wealthy/powerful would attention to this issue benefit? Like to be clear not only is it not an issue that's going to be addressed, the Biden administration is actually looking at loosening safety regulations further. Republicans are not going to go against industry. It's an industrial state that flagrantly does not care about pollution issues (like building a shopping mall on top of a toxic waste d…
Thank you for a well-reasoned (and well-written) argument. I mean, it's depressing, even devastating, but it's better to know the truth.
It wasn't supposed to make you feel good. I ain't feel good writing any of that shit either, I hope nothing there makes you think I'm anything other than a deeply unhappy person, it fucking sucks and it just continues to get worse every year.
It's just, it's the same dead kids every week. This week they died in a super cool explosion or got super cool cancer instead of dying in a super cool school shooting or choked to death by a couple super cool cops or died of a super cool preventable illness because their medication costs $2k a month, or gotten super cool lead poisoning from an emergency manager after being stripped of their democratic process. We shrugged about helping 9/11 first responders, you think people really care about some dead kids?
People don't care, not really, they say they do but they don't vote like it. The whole "thoughts and prayers" meme is a nod to just how little we really care. You wanna see people get real unhappy and start voting some fuckers out, make the flow of amazon packages stop. The dead kids don't matter, not like the packages do, people will line up and vote on that shit. If there is the perception of things going back to the way they were in 2020 with the supply chain people are gonna lose their fucking shit and vote in some really despicable motherfuckers (oh, it can always get worse). The trains gotta run.
The revealed preference of american society is stability above morality or dead kids. And we're willing to go pretty authoritarian too to get that stability, if it comes down to it, like the emergency manager shit. Biden's doing a great job catering to what americans really want and vote on, which is making the damn amazon packages show up.
America just wants to have a normal dinner for once. Yep, some kids died, that happens every week here and we just move on. More kids are gonna die next week, and the week after that too. Open for business, buddy, did I fucking stutter?
Shikata ga nai. There just isn't. Not unless an awful lot of people suddenly start being cool about an awful lot of stuff.
Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 a…
No, the point was it took me minutes to find and you didn't really care to find an answer as much as you pretended.
But you didn’t find anything other that Vance is on Team Bad Guy? Thank you for helping prove the strength of my steel man.