IFR Posted February 14, 2023 Share Posted February 14, 2023 I'm surprised there isn't a thread about this. On February 3, a train with carcinogenic chemicals was derailed. An explosion occurred, venting chemicals to the public. The public was then evacuated and a controlled burn was performed to prevent further explosions. The amount of chemicals was underreported initially, but there was 1 million pounds of vinyl chloride in the cargo (according to Representative Jamaal Bowman), of which an unknown amount was vented, along with butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate and ethylene glycol monobutyl ether. Contaminents are confirmed to have entered the Ohio River. There have been reports that a reporter was arrested trying to report on the incident, though the context of this is uncertain (link below). The EPA has declared that no concentrations of concern of vinyl chloride have been screened. However residents have reported sightings of dead animals, and have reported smelling the chemicals in the air (according to the CDC, odor of vinyl chloride is detectable at 3000 ppm, though other chemicals in which vinyl chloride can decompose to may also be the source of the odor). All of this is after Norfolk Railway had lobbied to repeal established rules that required for controlled pneumatic brakes on trains with hazardous material for cargo. The extent of this disaster will be unknown for many years, probably not until there is a decades long longitudinal study on the increases in angiosarcoma events and other cancers within this population. Regardless this is a significant and newsworthy event, particularly so soon after Biden blocked attempts at a railroad strike. On the arrested reporter. New York Times report on event. Residents report dead animals. Norfolk Railway blocking safety requirments. EPA updates on event. CDC description of vinyl chloride. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luzifer's right hand Posted February 14, 2023 Share Posted February 14, 2023 It was bound to happen when you cripple the orgs that are supposed to keep corporations in check. A lot of smaller scale accidents never make news outside of certain circles as large parts of the USA are very anti-environmentalism. This just too big to hide. The bullshit you can read about it is fascinating. Claiming that the burn released only HCl and CO2 while the videos of pictures show black smoke... You smell it at 3000 ppm and the 8h TWA is 1 ppm... Edit: Some posts on reddit suggest tha a company called Tetra Tech that has used fake soil samples in the past is involved in the cleanup. Difficult to verify though as news about this event is really lacking on key details. Not the fact of the companies past practices but I found it impossible to confirm that they are involved. Companies that solve such problems on paper only tend to be a thing in reality sadly. Quote The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2018 found that as much as 97 percent of Tetra Tech’s cleanup data from two parcels on the site was suspect and should be retested. That same year, two former Tetra Tech supervisors were sentenced to federal prison after admitting they swapped out contaminated soil samples for clean ones. Tetra Tech has blamed the fraud on a small group of “rogue” employees. https://therealdeal.com/sanfrancisco/2023/02/03/judge-kills-5-4m-settlement-over-cleanup-at-sfs-hunters-point/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spockydog Posted February 14, 2023 Share Posted February 14, 2023 It does appear that this incident is being swept under the carpet by much of the world's media. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spockydog Posted February 14, 2023 Share Posted February 14, 2023 4 hours ago, IFR said: There have been reports that a reporter was arrested trying to report on the incident, though the context of this is uncertain (link below). Looks like he was arrested for trying to do his job - i.e. listening to the National Guard good old boys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IFR Posted February 14, 2023 Author Share Posted February 14, 2023 5 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said: It was bound to happen when you cripple the orgs that are supposed to keep corporations in check. A lot of smaller scale accidents never make news outside of certain circles as large parts of the USA are very anti-environmentalism. This just too big to hide. The bullshit you can read about it is fascinating. Claiming that the burn released only HCl and CO2 while the videos of pictures show black smoke.. Also trace amounts of phosgene. I tend to agree with you. I'm not generally conspiracy minded...except when it comes to holding corporations accountable. And this is generally where the news ought to come in to raise awareness to the public. But this has not received coverage proportional to its significance, I think. Instead a lot of interest is focused on UFOs (which historically has been a smoke and mirrors affair). I'm curious to see how this pans out in a few respects. For one, to what extent will Norfolk be held liable? For two, the results of a long term epidemiological study on the health effects of the population, and the ecological ramifications. And finally, if the government will take any action at all to correct the reduced safety standards that made this disaster possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karaddin Posted February 14, 2023 Share Posted February 14, 2023 2 hours ago, Spockydog said: Looks like he was arrested for trying to do his job - i.e. listening to the National Guard good old boys. Oh, they said the magic words "stop resisting" - they can do whatever they want after that regardless of whether the person was actually resisting! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcbigski Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 8 hours ago, karaddin said: Oh, they said the magic words "stop resisting" - they can do whatever they want after that regardless of whether the person was actually resisting! How else are you going to keep the desired information disseminating? It's a bit like that Churchill quote about the truth needing a body guard of lies, except it's lies all the way down. Would this have been Trump's fault, had the elections not been so well fortified? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThinkerX Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 9 hours ago, karaddin said: Oh, they said the magic words "stop resisting" - they can do whatever they want after that regardless of whether the person was actually resisting! I am reminded of the episodes during the Deepwater Horizon fiasco when local authorities confiscated cameras belonging to people taking pictures of the spill, claiming it was 'BP's show' or some such. For that matter, there is a two mile long stretch of public highway near me fronting a set of petrochemical plants (one of them defunct) where taking pictures is illegal (and enforced by local security). Tales have reached my ears of people walking along that road being given rides just to get them past the area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvinus85 Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 39 minutes ago, mcbigski said: Would this have been Trump's fault, had the elections not been so well fortified? Well according to The Lever article which the OP linked, the Obama administration imposed a regulation that trains needs to start using a new brake system that had been developed. After Trump got into office he removed that regulation, after rail industry lobbyists started greasing the hands of Reps, but the Biden administration has failed to do anything about it, too. Likely hands got greased this time, too. According to an expert that brake system could have prevent the derailment. So yes, Trump shares the blame. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcbigski Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 16 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said: Well according to The Lever article which the OP linked, the Obama administration imposed a regulation that trains needs to start using a new brake system that had been developed. After Trump got into office he removed that regulation, after rail industry lobbyists started greasing the hands of Reps, but the Biden administration has failed to do anything about it, too. Likely hands got greased this time, too. According to an expert that brake system could have prevent the derailment. So yes, Trump shares the blame. Warren Buffet has been a huge proponent of rail over pipelines. So let's blame him too. But hey, if you're saying congress and the senate are mostly about their own pockets, we might be in the same chapter at least, if not on the same page. Though possibly we use less of these chemicals than we do oil and gas and pipelines would just be a boondoggle. I'm not super familiar with The Lever. Looked at the homepage and while I agree that criticizing Buttegieg is warranted here, my impression, based on the other article about union workers versus private equity, is that they're coming from a left pinkyfinger perspective. (ie extreme left. I might have just invented that phrase, but I think I like it. Evokes our leftmost finger and pinko's. Didn't see any hits on the first page of Bing at least.) Also not defending private equity catagorically. Prosperity is great, but it seems easier to legislate your way there than to innovate it these days. If you can make a buck making one person better off and scale it up, then that's fine with me. It's when you make the bucks because you've bought enough of the government where it becomes negative sum. <I'm not sure why I'm unable to proofread my posts before clicking on them but I do seem to edit a higher percentage right away than I ought..._> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Varysblackfyre321 Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 59 minutes ago, mcbigski said: Would this have been Trump's fault, had the elections not been so well fortified? Sigh I wish I had your confidence that there was an woke satanist elite who knows everything and is able to control everything. It’d take a burden off my shoulders to not do anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcbigski Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 12 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said: Sigh I wish I had your confidence that there was an woke satanist elite who knows everything and is able to control everything. Well there's a decent chance this ends up with a Hurricane Katrina sort of death toll. (approx 1800, I'd expect less just due to population density probably within an order of magnitude). Though it may take a lot longer to get there and the various cancer signals will get swamped in other shit. And drowning all at once is worse than dying of lung problems or whatever 5 years earlier than you would have gone. But still, even though I've come around to the fact that Bush 43 was an establishment warmonger or at best a useful idiot for those, the lack of finger pointing up here could be instructional for the properly open minded person. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvinus85 Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 25 minutes ago, mcbigski said: Warren Buffet has been a huge proponent of rail over pipelines. So let's blame him too. Also not defending private equity catagorically. Prosperity is great, but it seems easier to legislate your way there than to innovate it these days. If you can make a buck making one person better off and scale it up, then that's fine with me. It's when you make the bucks because you've bought enough of the government where it becomes negative sum. <I'm not sure why I'm unable to proofread my posts before clicking on them but I do seem to edit a higher percentage right away than I ought..._> Well to borrow your own phrase, we might be in the same chapter about this, same section at least. Otherwise, not sure what you said. The gist of this is greedy rich people bribe greedy (rich) politicians to not impose any rules on them that prevent them from squeezing every last cent they can, regardless of how many lives, not livelihoods, LIVES it costs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcbigski Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 18 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said: Well to borrow your own phrase, we might be in the same chapter about this, same section at least. Otherwise, not sure what you said. The gist of this is greedy rich people bribe greedy (rich) politicians to not impose any rules on them that prevent them from squeezing every last cent they can, regardless of how many lives, not livelihoods, LIVES it costs. It does seem to me that the entrenched power brokers want to suppress popular opinion as much as possible. Personally, it looks to me like Musk is an accidental exception at Twitter, but he'll probably fall out a window. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Week Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 9 minutes ago, mcbigski said: Personally, it looks to me like Musk is an accidental exception at Twitter, but he'll probably fall out a window. Ah, yes, the known populist, Elon Musk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karaddin Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 Can you imagine having that much money and still logging on every day to humiliate yourself with public displays of raging insecurity? /tangent Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IheartIheartTesla Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 On 2/14/2023 at 3:54 AM, IFR said: The amount of chemicals was underreported initially, but about 1 million pounds of vinyl chloride was vented (according to Representative Jamaal Bowman), along with butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate and ethylene glycol monobutyl ether. Contaminents are confirmed to have entered the Ohio River. There have been reports that a reporter was arrested trying to report on the incident, though the context of this is uncertain (link below). Alright, I've been trying to get an estimate how much was vented, but understandably this may be hard to quantify. However, Rep Bowman's tweet stated that the entire manifest was 1 million lb of vinyl chloride, of which some X quantity was released during the event. About 5 railcars were intentionally burned from what I've gathered, so the answer is probably less than 1 MM lb, but how much I dont know. At any rate, chemical spills are tough to deal with. Its a headache for us in the lab, and at this industrial scale its a nightmare. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IFR Posted February 15, 2023 Author Share Posted February 15, 2023 6 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said: Alright, I've been trying to get an estimate how much was vented, but understandably this may be hard to quantify. However, Rep Bowman's tweet stated that the entire manifest was 1 million lb of vinyl chloride, of which some X quantity was released during the event. About 5 railcars were intentionally burned from what I've gathered, so the answer is probably less than 1 MM lb, but how much I dont know. Thanks for the clarification. I hadn't seen the manifest or any reliable data other than that, so I just went with the tweet without further context. Here is a picture of the plume formed from the controlled burn, taken from a passenger plane. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DireWolfSpirit Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 I think im leaning towards preferring rail over pioelines as well. Pipelines have proven to be too leaking and a greater pollutant agent towards groundwater overall. No delivery system will be flawless of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maarsen Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 2 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said: I think im leaning towards preferring rail over pioelines as well. Pipelines have proven to be too leaking and a greater pollutant agent towards groundwater overall. No delivery system will be flawless of course. Rail has issues too. Look up the Lac Megantic disaster to find out how bad it can get. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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