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

Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment

wkbn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 136 posts

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

#51

Post by culi »

beeboop wrote: post #41
NegativeLatency wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or 4 years of hollowing out regulatory agencies is having a lingering effect

Regulations seem more or less the same today as they did a decade ago. What exactly are you referring to?

More or less the same?? We had 4 years of the largest reversal on environmental protections we've ever seen

The Trump administration had replaced the Clean Power Plan, redefined critical terms under the Endangered Species Act, lifted oil and natural gas extraction bans, weakened the Coal Ash Rule, which regulates the disposal of toxic coal waste, and revised Mercury and Air Toxic Standards–just to name a few

Here's a full list: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-envir...

And that doesn't count the extralegal strategies used by the administration to bring the department to a halt

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

#52

Post by selectodude »

ikiris wrote: post #48
ctrlaltdylan wrote: post #40

Grew up 30 miles west of East Palestine. My family is still there. So sad to see another struggling Midwest town dealt a death blow. It’s beautiful country even though it’s considered fly over and “blue collar” which is politically correct terminology for post-industrial poor. The EPA has roots from the Cuyahoga River fires. There was great progress made cleaning up the river and even turning portions of Northeast Oh…

how the hell is Ohio midwest?

West of the applachians, east of the rockies. Midwest.

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

#53

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ikiris wrote: post #48
ctrlaltdylan wrote: post #40

Grew up 30 miles west of East Palestine. My family is still there. So sad to see another struggling Midwest town dealt a death blow. It’s beautiful country even though it’s considered fly over and “blue collar” which is politically correct terminology for post-industrial poor. The EPA has roots from the Cuyahoga River fires. There was great progress made cleaning up the river and even turning portions of Northeast Oh…

how the hell is Ohio midwest?

If you look at a map, it's clearly not. Not "mid", which would be from Chicago to Denver, and even more not "west", which would be west of Denver.

But "midwest" is a term for a region, and terms last longer than the reason for the term. When the term was coined, the US essentially ended at Chicago, and Ohio was midwest.

Hmm. I must be in a mellow mood today. I've made the exact same complaint you did when others said Pittsburgh was "midwest".

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

#54

Post by culi »

orange_joe wrote: post #23

It's worth mentioning the backdrop of this is the current drive toward PSR (precision scheduled railroading), which has meant overworking train engineers with improved "efficiencies" through extremely long trains, and overworked employees. This has greatly increased the value of the train companies on the stock market, but at the expense of the workers (this came to a head a few months ago with pending labor strikes…

(Precision Scheduled Railroading)

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

#55

Post by photochemsyn »

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 depression and symptoms such as: ataxia or dizziness, drowsiness or fatigue, loss of consciousness, headache, euphoria and irritability, visual and or hearing disturbances, nausea, memory loss. Prolonged, high concentration exposures may cause unconsciousness or death. Cardiac: Acute intoxication may cause irregular heartbeats.

Chronic Effects: Chronic exposure to vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) may cause damage to the nervous system, respiratory system, musculoskeletal system, and lymphatic system. Occupational overexposure has produced a specific cancer. (angiosarcoma of the liver) and is associated with hepatocellular cancer. Repeated prolonged exposure may damage: skin (scleroderma), bones (acro-osteolysis), blood vessels in the hands (Raynaud's Syndrome). Suspected of causing genetic defects. Suspected of damaging fertility or the unborn child. Reproductive effects and testes damage occurred in rats exposed to vinyl chloride. These endpoints, however, were generally noted at concentrations greater than those necessary to cause liver damage.

Looks like a lot of cost-cutting (not shipping on trains with the most modern safe braking systems?) and regulatory shenanigans (not classified as highly hazardous material?) were involved in this... oh wait, it gets better...

> "Thousands in East Palestine, a town of about 5,000 people, evacuated, and officials warned the controlled burn would create a phosgene and hydrogen chloride plume across the region. Phosgene is a highly toxic gas that can cause vomiting and breathing trouble, and was used as a weapon in the first world war."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/ohio-train-d...

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

#56

Post by orange_joe »

culi wrote: post #54
orange_joe wrote: post #23

It's worth mentioning the backdrop of this is the current drive toward PSR (precision scheduled railroading), which has meant overworking train engineers with improved "efficiencies" through extremely long trains, and overworked employees. This has greatly increased the value of the train companies on the stock market, but at the expense of the workers (this came to a head a few months ago with pending labor strikes…

(Precision Scheduled Railroading)

edited my comment for clarity thanks!

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

#57

Post by SapporoChris »

ikiris wrote: post #48
ctrlaltdylan wrote: post #40

Grew up 30 miles west of East Palestine. My family is still there. So sad to see another struggling Midwest town dealt a death blow. It’s beautiful country even though it’s considered fly over and “blue collar” which is politically correct terminology for post-industrial poor. The EPA has roots from the Cuyahoga River fires. There was great progress made cleaning up the river and even turning portions of Northeast Oh…

how the hell is Ohio midwest?

Standard cultural conventions of the locals I suppose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States

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

#58

Post by acdha »

beeboop wrote: post #41
NegativeLatency wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or 4 years of hollowing out regulatory agencies is having a lingering effect

Regulations seem more or less the same today as they did a decade ago. What exactly are you referring to?

There are two big things to consider even if Congress didn’t change the laws significantly. The first is that Congress delegates the power to decide exactly what’s covered by a law to the agencies, on the theory that they employ experts and can adjust over time faster than a legal change. Under Trump, a significant number of regulations were changed at the behest of the affected industries:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-envir...

The second is more subtle: enforcement is only as good as the people doing it. Under Trump there was an unprecedented effort to politicize normal job functions and, especially, to purge workers who were suspected of political disloyalty.

The obvious thing people would worry about is political ideologies being installed in what are normally supposed to be neutral, science-based jobs but if your goal is simply to prevent normal government operations it’s almost as good to let things stagnate by driving away people who are tired of having their day to day job involve ethical conflicts or simply not rehiring after normal attrition.

It’s the same reason Republicans were trying to fight staffing at the IRS: if you say rich people shouldn’t pay much in taxes, you have to take the heat for that with the voters. If instead you ensure that the auditing division is understaffed and their pay scale doesn’t stretch to the kind of high-end accountants who can go toe-to-toe with a billionaire’s, you get close to the same result without having to stand for it, and you can probably even get a political win by claiming that they have enough money but are wasting it.

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

#59

Post by culi »

SamBam wrote: post #37
sbelskie wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen a handful of national media outlets cover it without paying any particular attention. What level of attention should this story be getting?

I don't see it anywhere at all in the New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/04/us/train-derailment-fire-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/us/ohio-train-derailment-...

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

#60

Post by naasking »

Stress responses and hysteria can also cause numerous health problems (see wind turbine syndrome, EMF sensitivity, etc.). People misattribute cause and effect all the time, and they notice sicknesses they would normally dismiss if there were no obvious cause that understandably heightens their paranoia.

Which isn't to say nothing is going on either, this was a colossal regulatory failure letting these companies overwork train operators and not forcing rail operators to upgrade the braking systems. But let's also not jump to conclusions.

Post reply on HN