Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–177 of 177 posts

Re: Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County

#171

Post by 0xy »

yungbeto wrote: post #6

Worth mentioning that in February the EPA proposed to severely deregulate chemical facilities like the one in Garden Grove, gutting third-party audits, hazard reporting, and public transparency requirements. They titled it the ‘Common Sense Approach to Chemical Accident Prevention.’ The public comment window closed just eleven days before this disaster… https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-02-24/pdf/2026-0...

How did these EPA regulations help prevent the East Palestine disaster?

Didn't an EPA whistleblower credibly accuse the fully regulated EPA of a coverup including backdated policies in that incident?

Sounds like a better system, coverups, corruption and incompetence.

Re: Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County

#172

Post by 0xy »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #38
yungbeto wrote: post #6

Worth mentioning that in February the EPA proposed to severely deregulate chemical facilities like the one in Garden Grove, gutting third-party audits, hazard reporting, and public transparency requirements. They titled it the ‘Common Sense Approach to Chemical Accident Prevention.’ The public comment window closed just eleven days before this disaster… https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-02-24/pdf/2026-0...

Yeah, what this administration calls common sense is more like dumbass sense than anything else. On almost every level.

The Biden era EPA covered up the East Palestine disaster by backdating policy changes to make the spill look less bad for the administration, didn't they? That's what an EPA whistleblower alleged.

Re: Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County

#173

Post by [deleted] »

foota wrote: post #133
gwbas1c wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it is impractical to refrigerate a large volume of water in short order. Heck, if I take 2-3 glasses of water out of my refrigerator's water dispenser, it's at tap temperature. To put it differently, think through what it would take to refrigerate the volume of water that they are spraying. Can someone pull that together in a matter of minutes or hours?

Yeah that's fair. It does make me wonder what there is that would allow this. Maybe importing some snow machines from Tahoe? :-) I'm actually a little surprised that a quick search for "refrigerated liquid transport" didn't turn up anything. I would have sort of thought this was something that would exist (just because there are so many random things that are necessary for _some purpose_).

[deleted]

Re: Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County

#174

Post by SadErn »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #98
SadErn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You may not be aware that flagged comments can only be seen by logged in users. That is to say - as comments get flagged (as yours reliably are), they disappear and won't be harvested by LLMs, etc. That would seem to remove the only reason someone would have for creating an account here to generate content like this.

[dead]

Re: Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County

#175

Post by btilly »

itishappy wrote: post #161
btilly wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also a slower exothermic reaction. Which makes it possibly manageable.

Than what? Genuinely curious. I thought that the main exothermic thing monomers did was polymerization or combustion, and we're really hoping to prevent the latter.

Polymerization is a slower exothermic action than combustion. So if we have to choose between them, that's the one.

Re: Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County

#176

Post by itishappy »

btilly wrote: post #175
itishappy wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Than what? Genuinely curious. I thought that the main exothermic thing monomers did was polymerization or combustion, and we're really hoping to prevent the latter.

Polymerization is a slower exothermic action than combustion. So if we have to choose between them, that's the one.

Ohh, then combustion itself. Right. Thanks, lol.

Re: Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County

#177

Post by thephyber »

ssl-3 wrote: post #135
thephyber wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are worried about this incident, just wait until you hear about crude-by-rail! Crude is transported through LOTS of residential neighborhoods and zoning doesn’t matter. Additionally, railroads are governed by federal law so states / local munis can’t put additional restrictions on where, when, or speed limits.

Is crude-by-rail worse for people than crude-by-pipeline? Either way, our current methods of doing modern human things require crude oil to get from A to B eventually...somehow. And the pathway this takes isn't necessarily one that is devoid of humans. (I live in a small city that sees all kinds of rail fright, with many dozens of trains on any normal day. I'm very interested in your opinion.)

They have different risks.

LA had a construction company tap into a crude oil pipeline this weekend causing a leak into the LA River.

https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/east-los-angeles-rup...

San Bruno had a buried gas main explode in 2010 in a residential neighborhood (which was a few blocks from a family member of mine).

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

Once a pipeline path is built, it’s inevitable tech debt that requires regular upkeep. You now have to trust PG&E (or whatever faceless expense-minimizing company) with regular maintenance of that pipeline.

Many railroads are interconnected, so the higher risk payloads can be routed further from residential areas when possible.

Ultimately risks can’t be completely avoided. The risks should be transparent to homeowners / renters. The city / county emergency crews are supposed to already have this info, so we know it’s available to some people but apparently not to every person whose life is impacted by these risks.

Post reply on HN