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Health concerns mounting as animals become sick after train derailment

199 points by xook 4y ago

jprd 4y ago
It is _super_ weird how little attention this derailment seems to be attracting.
- adamnemecek 4y ago
  They are locking up journalists so it's not that surprising.
  - arp242 4y ago
    Who is locking up journalists?
    - dhbanes 4y ago
      https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/02/09/us/newsnation-reporter-arrest-evan-lambert-ohio/index.html https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/02/09/us/newsnation-reporter-ar...
      - arp242 4y ago
        Things like "he was told to stop speaking during the governor's remarks" and "asked Lambert to stop his live reporting because they believed it was loud and disruptive" seems to indicate it's a situation escalating because ... I don't know, I wasn't there, and there doesn't seem to be any footage of these incidents. Hard to tell who is "at fault".
        emodendroket 4y ago
        I think the PR desk of the people accused of improperly arresting a journalist may not be an entirely neutral source for accounts of what happened.
    - acdha 4y ago
      They’re probably referring to this: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/09/reporter-arrested-ohio-train-derailment-00081999 https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/09/reporter-arrested-o...
    - chrononaut 4y ago
      I assume they are referring to this single instance, as it's the only one I could find. https://apnews.com/article/law-enforcement-pennsylvania-mike-dewine-ohio-aca9f89f4b6afe701aabf9ffd2b53d0f https://apnews.com/article/law-enforcement-pennsylvania-mike... But within the article: > At the end of his news conference, [Gov. Mike] DeWine said he didn’t authorize the arrest and reporters have “every right” to report during briefings. > “If someone was stopped from doing that, or told they could not do that, that was wrong,” DeWine said. Seems OP's statement is a bit generally misleading statement for a single incident, without also knowing the full details that prompted the arrest in the first place.
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    For reporting on the derailing?!
    - xenospn 4y ago
      Yes
      - chrononaut 4y ago
        A single journalist, among many attendees, being arrested for allegedly being loud in a gymnasium during a news conference is a bit of a stretch to state as evidence that authorities are generally arresting journalists reporting on the derailing.
    - lwansbrough 4y ago
      Parent comment is misleading. See one of the other replies.
  - blooalien 4y ago
    Source?
- sbelskie 4y ago
  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?
  - s5300 4y ago
    Given the fact it’s going to affect things downstream & across state lines… probably at least the level that “Chinese spy balloons” are getting. Might hinge on how bad the first impending acid rain ends up being. I think Jackson Mississippi still doesn’t have clean water, & you haven’t seen that in any headlines for quite some time. Most things that actually matter don’t get very good news coverage, lest people become concerned about how hard they’re being swindled by corporations. Ohio just got completely swindled by JD Vance, so nobody should be surprised when bad things continue to happen to the general populace with zero accountability from those causing it. Also, keep in mind that this is the land of a river (Cuyahoga aka Cleveland) catching on fire at least 15 times. Environmental disasters with no accountability are our groove.
    - auctoritas 4y ago
      How does JD Vance have anything to do with this
      - User23 4y ago
        Here’s my attempt at a steel man: JD Vance is one of the bad guys on the bad guys team. Whenever bad things happen it’s the bad guys’ fault. I’m aware that sounds like a pretty poor alloy, but it’s internally consistent, matches the observables, and I can’t really honestly do better. Edit: The point of this is to explain what this derailment has to do with JD Vance. Any reply that fails to explain why JD Vance is somehow personally involved is failing to do better than the offered steel man. Just generally supporting policies you disagree with merely makes him a bad guy. You do think he’s bad for supporting these policies you believe are bad right? Next you have to show that a freshman senator in the minority who’s been in office for a month is somehow responsible even indirectly. I’d like to see a better effort to steel man that than mine.
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  Aren't there several of these situations ongoing at any given time? It has happened twice near some aunts of mine. Train derailments leaking chemicals do not seem that rare.
  - morpheos137 4y ago
    Train derailments involving vinyl chloride, a highly toxic, carcinogenic chemical are rare though... Vinyl chloride also known as vinyl monomer is used to make PVC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_chloride https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_chloride
    - fuzzfactor 4y ago
      The Vinyl Chloride Monomer is often referred to as VCM. It is a gas which is liquefied under pressure in a similar way to propane, so tanks and rail cars must be completely airtight at all times. Otherwise the entire liquid cargo will rapidly be expelled under pressure as a liquid from any opening on the bottom of the vessel, or the entire liquid cargo will still evaporate quite rapidly and eventually all escape as a gas stream through defects or open valves on the top part of the vessel. Any VCM liquid spilled will act like propane and rapidly turn into a gas which will disperse much wider through the air much more rapidly. Not much is going to soak into the soil or be carried away by water drainage channels. If it was an acetone spill or something like that it wouldn't evaporate nearly as fast, nor present as widespread an atmospheric content downwind, and you would have to get a lot closer to the spill to detect the vapors or smell it yourself even for a briskly evaporating liquid like acetone. But the VCM is not only flammable, it is actually a highly toxic gas. VCM smells exactly like most brand-new PVC shower curtains, because VCM's exactly what you're smelling in very small concentrations, as any residual monomer often outgasses strongly the first few days after hanging the curtain. In an unventilated bathroom I would think that's often beyond the recognized working VCM levels allowed in industrial facilities.
- kevingadd 4y ago
  If you search Google News, it's been widely covered - it just falls off the front page quickly in favor of other things.
- mc32 4y ago
  Given the amount of people affected and the toxicity of the chemicals, you'd think they'd give it commensurate coverage --such as Chinese balloons, Biden documents, Trump documents, Police beatings, etc.
- paulmd 4y ago
  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 dump level flagrancy) and nobody involved wants to rock the boat right now. https://twitter.com/RebeccaJBurns_/status/1624137139981062151 https://twitter.com/RebeccaJBurns_/status/162413713998106215... https://apnews.com/article/law-enforcement-pennsylvania-mike-dewine-ohio-aca9f89f4b6afe701aabf9ffd2b53d0f https://apnews.com/article/law-enforcement-pennsylvania-mike... https://architecturalafterlife.com/2020/07/city-view-center/ https://architecturalafterlife.com/2020/07/city-view-center/ The fundamental underlying issue is there's not enough people to run the trains. The train lines don't want to pay a high enough salary that the supply would meet demand, and DOT weed testing regulations are reducing the pool of eligible applicants as well, pushing that curve downwards further. They've been running fewer and fewer people per train and longer and longer trains, and it's getting unsafe. (it's the same reason freight trains no longer yield to passenger in america despite being statutorily required to - the freight trains are too long for the sidings, oops, guess we can't pull over, you'll have to! Trains have just gotten longer and less staffed and much closer to the safety capacity of the equipment as they get longer and heavier, and this is just one of many exciting ways this is playing out!) There is no way out of this without getting more people into train crews and reducing the size of the trains. The brakes on these trains can't safely stop a train of this length, and the derailleur equipment currently installed can't even safely derail trains of these lengths if they break loose, so when they go they go into a big pile of other cars and you get a massive industrial accident. It is. not. safe. to. run. trains. this. long. You need more crews and larger crews running smaller trains again. This is an issue that has crept up in the last 20 years and become a critical issue in the last 5 years. But pushing back on industry is a big no in America these days, Republicans aren't going to do back a union let alone go against industry (name a single ohio republican that would not have leapt on the framing of "Biden picks unions over rail jobs and christmas") and this isn't the fight the Biden administration wants to pick right now, they want this to go away. They already slapped down the union, which really pissed off quite a few of the base... but what are they gonna do, vote republican? The biden admin wants the trains to run on time so people get their amazon shit. And the local elected officials are on the 'locking up journalists who try to report it' level here, not actually doing anything that would inconvenience industry. And Biden just wants the trains to run on time, he's already made that very clear. So again: which set of powerful people are going to be making a big ruckus in the media? Everyone is OK with this. Ohio is an industrial state, they keep voting in Republicans (even in statewide offices) and fighting against unions. This is what Ohioans collectively signed up for and continue to sign up for every election. Open for business, right? Remember this when Intel wants you to move to Ohio for those new fabs. You're moving to an industrial hellscape and nobody's gonna care if your wife's shopping mall is built on a superfund site or an unsafe train running on a skeleton crew crashes and explodes and dumps a cloud of poison gas into the air. It's Ohio. Let alone any sort of fun genotoxic effect or pregnancy problems in the middle of abortion-war central. And it's not just this one place either, Ohio is a mess of all kinds of industrial shit. Ohio DGAF, is Intel worth your family getting cancer over? Economists have this idea called "revealed preference". The revealed preference here is that winning the War On Egghead Intellectuals, this year's installment of the War On LGBTQ, and the War On Climate Science is more important than not having dead kids. This has been repeatedly been made clear for 3 decades now. And Biden is just past the point where he cares about forcing angry toddlers to do the right thing, he's not gonna deathmatch SCOTUS over this of all things for people who don't even want him to and will frame him as just doing it for the union. People want their fucking amazon packages, they want Dow-Corning and 3M and Duke Coal jobs, if you wanna kill your kids or give them turbocancer so that parcel delivery line-costs go down 5% then nobody's gonna stop you, Amazon thanks you for your service to America's profit margins. Uncle Joe has always been a lot better at politics than people give him credit for, why make drama where none exists? Everyone just metaphorically wants to go have dinner, can we please just not fight about this for once? That's why nobody is talking about it. (Michigan also had that same plating company dump a bunch more hexavalent chromium into the Huron River again, so to be fair Ohio is not alone in midwest toxic spill stories flying under the radar! But it seems likely Whitmer/Nessel will put the hammer down, I am guessing the remediation is going to get a lot quicker and a lot less "voluntary"/"self-reported".)
- dv_dt 4y ago
  Smaller, less owned news outlets are providing some coverage: https://www.levernews.com/there-will-be-more-derailments/ https://www.levernews.com/there-will-be-more-derailments/
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
  Media too busy reporting on that piece of the sun that fell onto the moon.
- TomSwirly 4y ago
  It was big news here in Europe when it happened. I was surprised when my American friends didn't know anything about it.
- pvaldes 4y ago
  >This content is not available in your country/region.
LegitShady 4y ago
Terrifying. I would be very concerned as well. Promises of safety don't mean much in the face of animals becoming sick and dying
- mrinfinite 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - MRtecno98 4y ago
    Found the reddit user
bamboozled 4y ago
So this is Palestine, in America ?
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine,_Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine,_Ohio
- mdip 4y ago
  It's pretty common throughout the US, but there's a section of Ohio that I recall driving through which has several cities named for European and Asian countries. I had a girlfriend early in college who's grandmother lived deep in rural Ohio; we visited the area frequently and it involved driving past several. A bit of obscure trivia I learned while down there, "Russia, Ohio" is pronounced like "Roo-She". I was told this was because of the Cold War but even in my late teens "I wasn't so sure". The dialect of Southern English spoken by Grandma and the local population was a cross between deep Appalachia, slowly spoken and ... I don't know ... English-like words[1]. [0] Nice to see Wikipedia had the goofy pronounciation. It did not explain "why", unfortunately. [1] She had an English (only) speaking neighbor who had the most "articulated"/"exaggerated" variant -- I remember having "Tonne Cohwa" or "Tonne Cohs" (plural) translated for me after several attempts to figure out WTF that referred to... Yeah. It was the word Taco. We were talking about the cold weather, I thought.
  - EvanAnderson 4y ago
    Yeah... Russia. >sigh< I’m about 40 miles from Russia, OH. We’ve also got Versailles (pronounced like the “ver” in “verb” and “sales”), Houston (pronounced “house ton”), Lima (long I, like the bean), and Eldorado (long A) all in a 100 mile radius. We have some Native American names for cities and counties, too.
    - gibspaulding 4y ago
      Theres a Vienna in Illinois that the locals pronounce VAI-enna, Mexico Indiana, and of course Notre Dame college, pronounced Noder, then dame like an old married woman.
mouse_ 4y ago
The situation is really, really bad, and in a better world, might become the foundational precedent to new laws on letting corporations regulate themselves. https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rules-before-ohio-derailment/ https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rule... Related: Louis Rossmann - New York let tech companies WRITE THE LAW! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujCQCVHukx0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujCQCVHukx0
arp242 4y ago
Archive, because I get "This content is not available in your country/region" otherwise: https://archive.is/P4IqW https://archive.is/P4IqW
mshake2 4y ago
>“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 outside,” said James Justice with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Somebody is lying.
- arp242 4y ago
  Not necessarily; the reports really could be unrelated to the train accident, or the EPA was simply unable to detect the cause.
  - Alex3917 4y ago
    Given that you can go on YouTube and see videos of the head of the EPA telling the 9/11 first responders that the air was perfectly safe to breathe, I’m probably going to go with the cat owners on this one.
    - mshake2 4y ago
      Had to look it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijtLUisQKpA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijtLUisQKpA She used every excuse she had: "We weren't going to let the terrorists win" "My son was in building 7 and almost died" "We needed to get the city back on its feet"
    - Scubabear68 4y ago
      I worked a block away and we were back in very quickly. Then the HEPA filters came, then there was a lot of chaos. I learned a lot of how government can go wrong those few months.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
orange_joe 4y ago
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 on the railroads). Insiders have warned about its potential risks, and I'm not an expert so I can't speak to overall accident trends, but the increased number of cars on a given engine greatly increases risk of derailment. This clearly seems like a major environmental disaster and will hopefully bring greater scrutiny toward how the rail companies operate.
- culi 4y ago
  (Precision Scheduled Railroading)
  - orange_joe 4y ago
    edited my comment for clarity thanks!
- shevis 4y ago
  This is yet another symptom of shareholders becoming the primary customer. The strong incentive for short-term profit results in strategic decision-making that is both financially riskier and more ethically dubious in the long term.
  - soundsgoodtome 4y ago
    Ok. Do you realize that most of us are the shareholders? This is a Fortune 500 company. Most of our 401ks include blended Fortune 500 holdings. I keep hearing this rhetoric around social media… Do people not realize that there is a cost to our retirement funds always having to increase in value?
    - wpm 4y ago
      Hey champ if my 401k earning slightly less means not chem-Chernobyling small town USA or working people to death, that’s fine by me.
fassssst 4y ago
It’s like people are living through "White Noise" by Don DeLillo. Thanks ChatGPT for helping me remember the book based on the general scenario: "White Noise" is a darkly comic novel that explores themes of death, consumerism, and technology. The story takes place in a small Midwestern town where a poisonous cloud, known as "The Nanny," is hanging over the area and threatening the lives of its residents. The protagonist, Jack Gladney, is a professor of Hitler Studies who becomes obsessed with the cloud and its effects on the people around him. "White Noise" is widely regarded as one of DeLillo's best works and is considered a seminal work of postmodern fiction.”
- madrush2014 4y ago
  Interesting observation. I've read White Noise and a couple other DeLillo novels, it's a little difficult to describe, but I was put in a very strange state of mind after reading his work, kind of like glimpsing some hidden inner reality. Somewhat like The Stand by Stephen King. We had a fertilizer plant go up in flames last year about this time in Winston-Salem, NC, which is 50 miles from us which was alarming even at this radius.
- culi 4y ago
  The film adaptation of White Noise is about a freight train crashing and releasing toxic chemicals in the air and was filmed in Ohio around this area so yeah it seems like a very apt connection to make
- l3mure 4y ago
  > When Ben Ratner’s family signed up in 2021 to be extras in the movie “White Noise,” they thought it would be a fun distraction from their day-to-day life in blue-collar East Palestine, Ohio. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/health/ohio-train-derailment-white-noise/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/health/ohio-train-derailment-...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- uxp100 4y ago
  The nanny? Anyway, the poisonous cloud is perhaps metaphorically hanging over the town, but only during a short section of the novel is there actually a cloud. Though maybe in terms of pages the cloud isn’t over the town very long, but several weeks pass? This summary is mostly right? I guess?
ctrlaltdylan 4y ago
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 Ohio into a national park. Proud to be a Northeast Ohioan. There has been great steps forward since the industrial hay day. This whole event makes me so sad. This community will most likely never recover and I’m hoping against hope there aren’t serious health consequences or birth defects from this. Though I highly doubt it.
- ikiris 4y ago
  how the hell is Ohio midwest?
  - selectodude 4y ago
    West of the applachians, east of the rockies. Midwest.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - goatlover 4y ago
      I always thought west of the Mississippi was Midwest.
      - trillic 4y ago
        (Rockies, Mississippi River) == Great Plains States?
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    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".
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
photochemsyn 4y ago
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-derailment-wake-up-call https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/ohio-train-d...
- TomSwirly 4y ago
  > Phosgene is a highly toxic gas that can cause vomiting and breathing trouble, I'm a mathematician, not a chemist, but I do know about about phosgene. The memorable thing about phosgene is not that is causes "breathing trouble" but that it will kill you dead, dead, dead, and once you have a lethal dose, there is no effective treatment, and that it's a "linear poison" - small concentrations over hours and days have exactly the same effect as large concentrations for minutes (many poisons don't work that way). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene
naasking 4y ago
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.
twright 4y ago
In 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-derails-paulsboro-nj-releasing-23000-gallons-toxic-vinyl-chloride-gas.html https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/train-dera... Final NTSB report: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/RAR1401.pdf https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...
Ramster 4y ago
What chemicals were being transported on the train
octoluke 4y ago
What specific chemicals?
octoluke 4y ago
Anyone know which chemicals?

199 points by xook 4y ago

jprd 4y ago

It is _super_ weird how little attention this derailment seems to be attracting.

adamnemecek 4y ago
They are locking up journalists so it's not that surprising.
- arp242 4y ago
  Who is locking up journalists?
  - dhbanes 4y ago
    https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/02/09/us/newsnation-reporter-arrest-evan-lambert-ohio/index.html https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/02/09/us/newsnation-reporter-ar...
    - arp242 4y ago
      Things like "he was told to stop speaking during the governor's remarks" and "asked Lambert to stop his live reporting because they believed it was loud and disruptive" seems to indicate it's a situation escalating because ... I don't know, I wasn't there, and there doesn't seem to be any footage of these incidents. Hard to tell who is "at fault".
      - emodendroket 4y ago
        I think the PR desk of the people accused of improperly arresting a journalist may not be an entirely neutral source for accounts of what happened.
  - acdha 4y ago
    They’re probably referring to this: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/09/reporter-arrested-ohio-train-derailment-00081999 https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/09/reporter-arrested-o...
  - chrononaut 4y ago
    I assume they are referring to this single instance, as it's the only one I could find. https://apnews.com/article/law-enforcement-pennsylvania-mike-dewine-ohio-aca9f89f4b6afe701aabf9ffd2b53d0f https://apnews.com/article/law-enforcement-pennsylvania-mike... But within the article: > At the end of his news conference, [Gov. Mike] DeWine said he didn’t authorize the arrest and reporters have “every right” to report during briefings. > “If someone was stopped from doing that, or told they could not do that, that was wrong,” DeWine said. Seems OP's statement is a bit generally misleading statement for a single incident, without also knowing the full details that prompted the arrest in the first place.
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  For reporting on the derailing?!
  - xenospn 4y ago
    Yes
    - chrononaut 4y ago
      A single journalist, among many attendees, being arrested for allegedly being loud in a gymnasium during a news conference is a bit of a stretch to state as evidence that authorities are generally arresting journalists reporting on the derailing.
  - lwansbrough 4y ago
    Parent comment is misleading. See one of the other replies.
- blooalien 4y ago
  Source?
sbelskie 4y ago
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?
- s5300 4y ago
  Given the fact it’s going to affect things downstream & across state lines… probably at least the level that “Chinese spy balloons” are getting. Might hinge on how bad the first impending acid rain ends up being. I think Jackson Mississippi still doesn’t have clean water, & you haven’t seen that in any headlines for quite some time. Most things that actually matter don’t get very good news coverage, lest people become concerned about how hard they’re being swindled by corporations. Ohio just got completely swindled by JD Vance, so nobody should be surprised when bad things continue to happen to the general populace with zero accountability from those causing it. Also, keep in mind that this is the land of a river (Cuyahoga aka Cleveland) catching on fire at least 15 times. Environmental disasters with no accountability are our groove.
  - auctoritas 4y ago
    How does JD Vance have anything to do with this
    - User23 4y ago
      Here’s my attempt at a steel man: JD Vance is one of the bad guys on the bad guys team. Whenever bad things happen it’s the bad guys’ fault. I’m aware that sounds like a pretty poor alloy, but it’s internally consistent, matches the observables, and I can’t really honestly do better. Edit: The point of this is to explain what this derailment has to do with JD Vance. Any reply that fails to explain why JD Vance is somehow personally involved is failing to do better than the offered steel man. Just generally supporting policies you disagree with merely makes him a bad guy. You do think he’s bad for supporting these policies you believe are bad right? Next you have to show that a freshman senator in the minority who’s been in office for a month is somehow responsible even indirectly. I’d like to see a better effort to steel man that than mine.
throwawaysleep 4y ago
Aren't there several of these situations ongoing at any given time? It has happened twice near some aunts of mine. Train derailments leaking chemicals do not seem that rare.
- morpheos137 4y ago
  Train derailments involving vinyl chloride, a highly toxic, carcinogenic chemical are rare though... Vinyl chloride also known as vinyl monomer is used to make PVC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_chloride https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_chloride
  - fuzzfactor 4y ago
    The Vinyl Chloride Monomer is often referred to as VCM. It is a gas which is liquefied under pressure in a similar way to propane, so tanks and rail cars must be completely airtight at all times. Otherwise the entire liquid cargo will rapidly be expelled under pressure as a liquid from any opening on the bottom of the vessel, or the entire liquid cargo will still evaporate quite rapidly and eventually all escape as a gas stream through defects or open valves on the top part of the vessel. Any VCM liquid spilled will act like propane and rapidly turn into a gas which will disperse much wider through the air much more rapidly. Not much is going to soak into the soil or be carried away by water drainage channels. If it was an acetone spill or something like that it wouldn't evaporate nearly as fast, nor present as widespread an atmospheric content downwind, and you would have to get a lot closer to the spill to detect the vapors or smell it yourself even for a briskly evaporating liquid like acetone. But the VCM is not only flammable, it is actually a highly toxic gas. VCM smells exactly like most brand-new PVC shower curtains, because VCM's exactly what you're smelling in very small concentrations, as any residual monomer often outgasses strongly the first few days after hanging the curtain. In an unventilated bathroom I would think that's often beyond the recognized working VCM levels allowed in industrial facilities.
kevingadd 4y ago
If you search Google News, it's been widely covered - it just falls off the front page quickly in favor of other things.
mc32 4y ago
Given the amount of people affected and the toxicity of the chemicals, you'd think they'd give it commensurate coverage --such as Chinese balloons, Biden documents, Trump documents, Police beatings, etc.
paulmd 4y ago
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 dump level flagrancy) and nobody involved wants to rock the boat right now. https://twitter.com/RebeccaJBurns_/status/1624137139981062151 https://twitter.com/RebeccaJBurns_/status/162413713998106215... https://apnews.com/article/law-enforcement-pennsylvania-mike-dewine-ohio-aca9f89f4b6afe701aabf9ffd2b53d0f https://apnews.com/article/law-enforcement-pennsylvania-mike... https://architecturalafterlife.com/2020/07/city-view-center/ https://architecturalafterlife.com/2020/07/city-view-center/ The fundamental underlying issue is there's not enough people to run the trains. The train lines don't want to pay a high enough salary that the supply would meet demand, and DOT weed testing regulations are reducing the pool of eligible applicants as well, pushing that curve downwards further. They've been running fewer and fewer people per train and longer and longer trains, and it's getting unsafe. (it's the same reason freight trains no longer yield to passenger in america despite being statutorily required to - the freight trains are too long for the sidings, oops, guess we can't pull over, you'll have to! Trains have just gotten longer and less staffed and much closer to the safety capacity of the equipment as they get longer and heavier, and this is just one of many exciting ways this is playing out!) There is no way out of this without getting more people into train crews and reducing the size of the trains. The brakes on these trains can't safely stop a train of this length, and the derailleur equipment currently installed can't even safely derail trains of these lengths if they break loose, so when they go they go into a big pile of other cars and you get a massive industrial accident. It is. not. safe. to. run. trains. this. long. You need more crews and larger crews running smaller trains again. This is an issue that has crept up in the last 20 years and become a critical issue in the last 5 years. But pushing back on industry is a big no in America these days, Republicans aren't going to do back a union let alone go against industry (name a single ohio republican that would not have leapt on the framing of "Biden picks unions over rail jobs and christmas") and this isn't the fight the Biden administration wants to pick right now, they want this to go away. They already slapped down the union, which really pissed off quite a few of the base... but what are they gonna do, vote republican? The biden admin wants the trains to run on time so people get their amazon shit. And the local elected officials are on the 'locking up journalists who try to report it' level here, not actually doing anything that would inconvenience industry. And Biden just wants the trains to run on time, he's already made that very clear. So again: which set of powerful people are going to be making a big ruckus in the media? Everyone is OK with this. Ohio is an industrial state, they keep voting in Republicans (even in statewide offices) and fighting against unions. This is what Ohioans collectively signed up for and continue to sign up for every election. Open for business, right? Remember this when Intel wants you to move to Ohio for those new fabs. You're moving to an industrial hellscape and nobody's gonna care if your wife's shopping mall is built on a superfund site or an unsafe train running on a skeleton crew crashes and explodes and dumps a cloud of poison gas into the air. It's Ohio. Let alone any sort of fun genotoxic effect or pregnancy problems in the middle of abortion-war central. And it's not just this one place either, Ohio is a mess of all kinds of industrial shit. Ohio DGAF, is Intel worth your family getting cancer over? Economists have this idea called "revealed preference". The revealed preference here is that winning the War On Egghead Intellectuals, this year's installment of the War On LGBTQ, and the War On Climate Science is more important than not having dead kids. This has been repeatedly been made clear for 3 decades now. And Biden is just past the point where he cares about forcing angry toddlers to do the right thing, he's not gonna deathmatch SCOTUS over this of all things for people who don't even want him to and will frame him as just doing it for the union. People want their fucking amazon packages, they want Dow-Corning and 3M and Duke Coal jobs, if you wanna kill your kids or give them turbocancer so that parcel delivery line-costs go down 5% then nobody's gonna stop you, Amazon thanks you for your service to America's profit margins. Uncle Joe has always been a lot better at politics than people give him credit for, why make drama where none exists? Everyone just metaphorically wants to go have dinner, can we please just not fight about this for once? That's why nobody is talking about it. (Michigan also had that same plating company dump a bunch more hexavalent chromium into the Huron River again, so to be fair Ohio is not alone in midwest toxic spill stories flying under the radar! But it seems likely Whitmer/Nessel will put the hammer down, I am guessing the remediation is going to get a lot quicker and a lot less "voluntary"/"self-reported".)
dv_dt 4y ago
Smaller, less owned news outlets are providing some coverage: https://www.levernews.com/there-will-be-more-derailments/ https://www.levernews.com/there-will-be-more-derailments/
TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
Media too busy reporting on that piece of the sun that fell onto the moon.
TomSwirly 4y ago
It was big news here in Europe when it happened. I was surprised when my American friends didn't know anything about it.
pvaldes 4y ago
>This content is not available in your country/region.

LegitShady 4y ago

Terrifying. I would be very concerned as well. Promises of safety don't mean much in the face of animals becoming sick and dying

mrinfinite 4y ago
[flagged]
- MRtecno98 4y ago
  Found the reddit user

bamboozled 4y ago

So this is Palestine, in America ?

throwawaysleep 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine,_Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine,_Ohio
mdip 4y ago
It's pretty common throughout the US, but there's a section of Ohio that I recall driving through which has several cities named for European and Asian countries. I had a girlfriend early in college who's grandmother lived deep in rural Ohio; we visited the area frequently and it involved driving past several. A bit of obscure trivia I learned while down there, "Russia, Ohio" is pronounced like "Roo-She". I was told this was because of the Cold War but even in my late teens "I wasn't so sure". The dialect of Southern English spoken by Grandma and the local population was a cross between deep Appalachia, slowly spoken and ... I don't know ... English-like words[1]. [0] Nice to see Wikipedia had the goofy pronounciation. It did not explain "why", unfortunately. [1] She had an English (only) speaking neighbor who had the most "articulated"/"exaggerated" variant -- I remember having "Tonne Cohwa" or "Tonne Cohs" (plural) translated for me after several attempts to figure out WTF that referred to... Yeah. It was the word Taco. We were talking about the cold weather, I thought.
- EvanAnderson 4y ago
  Yeah... Russia. >sigh< I’m about 40 miles from Russia, OH. We’ve also got Versailles (pronounced like the “ver” in “verb” and “sales”), Houston (pronounced “house ton”), Lima (long I, like the bean), and Eldorado (long A) all in a 100 mile radius. We have some Native American names for cities and counties, too.
  - gibspaulding 4y ago
    Theres a Vienna in Illinois that the locals pronounce VAI-enna, Mexico Indiana, and of course Notre Dame college, pronounced Noder, then dame like an old married woman.

mouse_ 4y ago

The situation is really, really bad, and in a better world, might become the foundational precedent to new laws on letting corporations regulate themselves. https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rules-before-ohio-derailment/ https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rule... Related: Louis Rossmann - New York let tech companies WRITE THE LAW! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujCQCVHukx0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujCQCVHukx0

arp242 4y ago

Archive, because I get "This content is not available in your country/region" otherwise: https://archive.is/P4IqW https://archive.is/P4IqW

mshake2 4y ago

>“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 outside,” said James Justice with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Somebody is lying.

arp242 4y ago
Not necessarily; the reports really could be unrelated to the train accident, or the EPA was simply unable to detect the cause.
- Alex3917 4y ago
  Given that you can go on YouTube and see videos of the head of the EPA telling the 9/11 first responders that the air was perfectly safe to breathe, I’m probably going to go with the cat owners on this one.
  - mshake2 4y ago
    Had to look it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijtLUisQKpA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijtLUisQKpA She used every excuse she had: "We weren't going to let the terrorists win" "My son was in building 7 and almost died" "We needed to get the city back on its feet"
  - Scubabear68 4y ago
    I worked a block away and we were back in very quickly. Then the HEPA filters came, then there was a lot of chaos. I learned a lot of how government can go wrong those few months.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

orange_joe 4y ago

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 on the railroads). Insiders have warned about its potential risks, and I'm not an expert so I can't speak to overall accident trends, but the increased number of cars on a given engine greatly increases risk of derailment. This clearly seems like a major environmental disaster and will hopefully bring greater scrutiny toward how the rail companies operate.

culi 4y ago
(Precision Scheduled Railroading)
- orange_joe 4y ago
  edited my comment for clarity thanks!
shevis 4y ago
This is yet another symptom of shareholders becoming the primary customer. The strong incentive for short-term profit results in strategic decision-making that is both financially riskier and more ethically dubious in the long term.
- soundsgoodtome 4y ago
  Ok. Do you realize that most of us are the shareholders? This is a Fortune 500 company. Most of our 401ks include blended Fortune 500 holdings. I keep hearing this rhetoric around social media… Do people not realize that there is a cost to our retirement funds always having to increase in value?
  - wpm 4y ago
    Hey champ if my 401k earning slightly less means not chem-Chernobyling small town USA or working people to death, that’s fine by me.

fassssst 4y ago

It’s like people are living through "White Noise" by Don DeLillo. Thanks ChatGPT for helping me remember the book based on the general scenario: "White Noise" is a darkly comic novel that explores themes of death, consumerism, and technology. The story takes place in a small Midwestern town where a poisonous cloud, known as "The Nanny," is hanging over the area and threatening the lives of its residents. The protagonist, Jack Gladney, is a professor of Hitler Studies who becomes obsessed with the cloud and its effects on the people around him. "White Noise" is widely regarded as one of DeLillo's best works and is considered a seminal work of postmodern fiction.”

madrush2014 4y ago
Interesting observation. I've read White Noise and a couple other DeLillo novels, it's a little difficult to describe, but I was put in a very strange state of mind after reading his work, kind of like glimpsing some hidden inner reality. Somewhat like The Stand by Stephen King. We had a fertilizer plant go up in flames last year about this time in Winston-Salem, NC, which is 50 miles from us which was alarming even at this radius.
culi 4y ago
The film adaptation of White Noise is about a freight train crashing and releasing toxic chemicals in the air and was filmed in Ohio around this area so yeah it seems like a very apt connection to make
l3mure 4y ago
> When Ben Ratner’s family signed up in 2021 to be extras in the movie “White Noise,” they thought it would be a fun distraction from their day-to-day life in blue-collar East Palestine, Ohio. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/health/ohio-train-derailment-white-noise/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/health/ohio-train-derailment-...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
uxp100 4y ago
The nanny? Anyway, the poisonous cloud is perhaps metaphorically hanging over the town, but only during a short section of the novel is there actually a cloud. Though maybe in terms of pages the cloud isn’t over the town very long, but several weeks pass? This summary is mostly right? I guess?

ctrlaltdylan 4y ago

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 Ohio into a national park. Proud to be a Northeast Ohioan. There has been great steps forward since the industrial hay day. This whole event makes me so sad. This community will most likely never recover and I’m hoping against hope there aren’t serious health consequences or birth defects from this. Though I highly doubt it.

ikiris 4y ago
how the hell is Ohio midwest?
- selectodude 4y ago
  West of the applachians, east of the rockies. Midwest.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - goatlover 4y ago
    I always thought west of the Mississippi was Midwest.
    - trillic 4y ago
      (Rockies, Mississippi River) == Great Plains States?
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  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".

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

photochemsyn 4y ago

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

TomSwirly 4y ago
> Phosgene is a highly toxic gas that can cause vomiting and breathing trouble, I'm a mathematician, not a chemist, but I do know about about phosgene. The memorable thing about phosgene is not that is causes "breathing trouble" but that it will kill you dead, dead, dead, and once you have a lethal dose, there is no effective treatment, and that it's a "linear poison" - small concentrations over hours and days have exactly the same effect as large concentrations for minutes (many poisons don't work that way). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene

naasking 4y ago

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.

twright 4y ago

In 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-derails-paulsboro-nj-releasing-23000-gallons-toxic-vinyl-chloride-gas.html https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/train-dera... Final NTSB report: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/RAR1401.pdf https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...

Ramster 4y ago

What chemicals were being transported on the train

octoluke 4y ago

What specific chemicals?

octoluke 4y ago

Anyone know which chemicals?