Earlier quoted context omitted.
how the hell is Ohio midwest?
West of the applachians, east of the rockies. Midwest.
I always thought west of the Mississippi was Midwest.
Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment
81–90 of 136 posts
Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment
#82>“Smoke and chemicals from the train, that’s the only thing that can cause it, because it doesn’t just happen out of nowhere,” Holzer says. “The chemicals that we’re being told are safe in the air, that’s definitely not safe for the animals … or people.” >“All the readings we’ve been recording in the community have been at normal concentrations, normal background, what you would find in almost any community operating…
The widespread reports of smells in the air, headaches, dead fish and other animals makes it hard to believe that "all the readings are at normal concentrations". Although what they actually said is that all the readings they've recorded are normal. The most disconcerting thing is that vinyl chloride is a carcinogen, so there may be many people who have been exposed to enough to give them cancer but who won't know ab…
That quote specifically refers to air pollution. Many other leaking cars were carrying liquid hazardous chemicals. They expect a 100% aquatic life die off in waterways the pollutants reach.
The EPA claims they have a multi-stage containment system in place, and that the ground water and Ohio River are not at risk.
I don’t see how that is possible, but since this is HN, I’m hoping someone will point to an article explaining how modern spill containment works.
Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment
#83>“Smoke and chemicals from the train, that’s the only thing that can cause it, because it doesn’t just happen out of nowhere,” Holzer says. “The chemicals that we’re being told are safe in the air, that’s definitely not safe for the animals … or people.” >“All the readings we’ve been recording in the community have been at normal concentrations, normal background, what you would find in almost any community operating…
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.
Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment
#84Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment
#85Grew 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…
It's probably a good idea to have your family members visit a doctor to have blood drawn and tested for likely by-products of this accident and fire. To have a baseline proof of exposure could be handy later.
Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment
#86In a book today I stumbled on a similar accident almost ten years ago in New Jersey[1]. This one seems much more hazardous due to the combustion as well as scale of the accident.
https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/train-dera...
Final NTSB report: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...
Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment
#87>“Smoke and chemicals from the train, that’s the only thing that can cause it, because it doesn’t just happen out of nowhere,” Holzer says. “The chemicals that we’re being told are safe in the air, that’s definitely not safe for the animals … or people.” >“All the readings we’ve been recording in the community have been at normal concentrations, normal background, what you would find in almost any community operating…
Is it possible to look at these readings? Direct sensor data would answer this, right?
Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
how the hell is Ohio midwest?
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.
Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment
#89It'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…
Related to this, the railworkers rejected their current labor contract, but congress and Biden intervened, blocking a strike two months ago: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-signs-bill-block-us-r...
I'm a bit disappointed that none of the reporting on this incident I have come across is making these links.
Re: Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment
#90>“Smoke and chemicals from the train, that’s the only thing that can cause it, because it doesn’t just happen out of nowhere,” Holzer says. “The chemicals that we’re being told are safe in the air, that’s definitely not safe for the animals … or people.” >“All the readings we’ve been recording in the community have been at normal concentrations, normal background, what you would find in almost any community operating…
Charitably, they could be reading the wrong things, or the animals could be dying of unrelated causes. But... it's a bit hard to believe.