7 ms·

This isn't too far from me. Curious to hear thoughts from folks with deeper backgrounds in chemistry than I have (high school).

tomcam 4y ago
[flagged]
- bruce511 4y ago
  I am intrigued by your outrage (seriously). I'm curious to know what you are hoping the world's media will accomplish there? On the one hand train derailment, chemical fire, environmental damage - it makes for a story but really not a terribly interesting one (to me). It's certainly an unwelcome event, but there doesn't seem to be anything deeper than what you see on the surface. Is there a deeper story here? Is there some ongoing malfeasance that should be spotlighted? I completely understand that for those who live in East Palestine this may be a life altering event. But shitty events routinely happen to lots of people every day. I guess I'm missing what makes this special. Of course my sympathies are with those affected by this, I'm not heartless, but I'm (honestly) not sure what you hope the world's media will achieve.
  - ticviking 4y ago
    The TL;DR of the ongoing story is the train engineers tried to strike recently over these kinds of issues and our Congress stopped them from doing so. Now it’s an massive disaster that we were warned was coming and the basic measures to fix it(like hiring more engineers and letting them have sick days) won’t happen in a sane way.
    - boppo1 4y ago
      Yeah there's a lot of peop;e asking "why isn't everyone up in arms/hasn't this been all over the news?" The answer is democrats and republicans happily cosigned this check.
    - hgsgm 4y ago
      The unions negotiated for more sick/emergency time (supported by Democrats but blocked by Republicans), and argued that working sick/distracted would be a safety risk, but they did not negotiate for the equipment and maintenance changes that would have prevented this derailment. Wikipedia: > The trains were not equipped with electronically controlled pneumatic brakes, which a former Federal Railroad Administration official said would have reduced the severity of the accident.[4] In 2017, Norfolk Southern had successfully lobbied to have regulations requiring their use on trains carrying hazardous materials repealed.[4] > About 48 hours later, the National Transportation Safety Board said it had preliminary findings that a mechanical problem on an axle of one of the cars led to the derailment.[9] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Ohio_train_derailment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Ohio_train_derailment
  - sebkomianos 4y ago
    A few questions: 1) Do you think that a town getting poisoned is not "special"? 2) Do you think that the 5000 people that lived on said town are out of life-threatening danger? 3) Do you think it's only said town and said 5000 people that are threatened by this? 4) Don't you think that working conditions need to be regulated in order to be safe? 5) Don't you think that this disaster could help us prevent other ones?
    - worthless-trash 4y ago
      Explain how media sensationalism helps 1-5. The people are already very aware, authorities are already aware, you're already aware. so we can't use the awareness angle.
      - sebkomianos 4y ago
        I don't know what you mean by "sensationalism" so I will only say this: Such disasters need to be heavily reported on because that's the only way for better regulation and prevention. Furthermore, there is things that have to be done for the town to become safe and for the people to be taken care of and compensated. And that's about it, really.
        worthless-trash 4y ago
        We have a very different view of how media ends up affecting outcomes. I haven't seen many positive outcomes from media involvement, the cycle is too quick and the viewpoints heavily biased.
    - bruce511 4y ago
      I'll preface my answer by saying that "world media" (as mentioned in the parent post) and US Media are different things. If the goal is internal political pressure and accountability then sure US Media attention has some value. World media maybe not so much. 1) alas, in the US context its not really "special". There seems to be an article every 5 minutes about some business prioritising profit over the environment. I agree that its terrible, but unfortunately not special. 2) probably not. But media attention won't change their danger status. 3) absolutely not. Environmentalism, climate change, the ills of profits before environment are well documented and we'll understood. Politically the nation seems divided on thus topic. In an absurd way this event adds very little to the conversation. I think that's bonkers, but I don't think this event will change too many minds. 4) working conditions are already regulated. There are people in favour of more regulation, and some in favour of less. The US has some of the weakest labour regulation in the world (in some respects.) So yes, I think better regulation would be a desirable outcome. Then again that fire is already burning well. This event does little to fan the flames. 5) short answer is, unfortunately no. The root cause of this is profit over environment, profit over people. That's a particular US condition and it is intrinsic to the American psyche. Media attention of this event won't change that, and there's certainly no shortage of upcoming preventable ecological or human disasters waiting to happen. I'm not saying I'm happy with the status quo, but it's not like this is surprising, or frankly even newsworthy. It's life-changing to those folk affected, but the rest of the country don't really care. Which is whacked.
  - jandrese 4y ago
    Outrage about this story is directed at Norfolk Southern for operating the train without modern safety gear, for the Trump administration for rescinding the Obama era rules that would have required them to install modern safety gear, and the Biden administration for breaking up the strike that the workers were making over the safety conditions (among other things). This accident was going to happen eventually and all of the people who had the opportunity to stop it were either denied or were actively fighting against preventing it from happening because it might have impacted the $10 billion stock buyback[1] that lined so many billionaire's pockets. [1] http://www.nscorp.com/content/nscorp/en/news/norfolk-southern-announces-new--10-billion-stock-repurchase-prog.html http://www.nscorp.com/content/nscorp/en/news/norfolk-souther...
    - CatWChainsaw 4y ago
      Where's the capitalism good/regulation bad folks who post here? And do they want to take a field trip? :)
  - tomcam 4y ago
    Completely valid question. It seems like a pretty big situation. Those usually get tons of press coverage, presidential visits, cabinet-level management, and media scrutiny of all parties involved. This is how problems get solved, and, one hopes, prevented in the future. It’s why planes are so safe. When I was young crashes were much more frequent. I don’t know why Rihanna gets way more attention than Ohio. Or Flint, Michigan. Genuinely interested in your feedback.
    - bruce511 4y ago
      Is it a big situation though? I mean it's not small obviously, but compared to other events (Syria earthquake, war in Ukraine, hurricanes in Puerto Rico, blackouts in Texas, wild fires in California, snow storms across the NE US, Covid etc it seems small. (not unimportant, but small.) Granted this is very man-made, and apparently the result of very human profit motives. Which means politics. Which means its a 5 minute topic until the next political outrage comes along. Ultimately Rihanna gets more attention because discussing that doesn't devolve into a screaming match of the intrinsic americaness of exploitation over environment and people. And just like Flint the media will move on, but there's not a lot of long-term progress. Just like another mass shooting, the politicians will offer hopes and prayers, but won't take any action. I know, I'm jaded and cynical, but frankly media attention means nothing. It doesn't change minds, or votes, so ultimately events like this are just a "cost of doing business". It sucks, but am I wrong?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Don't understand why the world's media hasn't converged on the area. At least partly because it's not clear that it's safe to hang out there.
akomtu 4y ago
The two "helpful" byproducts of vinyl chloride burning like that is HF and phosgene. The wind is going to spread those rapidly.
- kurthr 4y ago
  I'm doubtful on the HF since it's not vinyl fluoride. More likely HCl. Likely, there's some phosgene, though I've read that in large fires that mostly get's burned up. Of course there's CO. The liquid remnants are carcinogenic. https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=106993 https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=10699... https://nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/2001.pdf https://nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/2001.pdf
  - op00to 4y ago
    There’s not nearly enough F in the air to create HF. Where does the fluorine come from? It’s like 5ppb in the air.
    - kurthr 4y ago
      It doesn't... there is none. Any reporting that says there is likely is confused about other stuff too. I'm open to finding out there was a tank of Fluorine (now that's hazardous cargo!) in a nearby car, but it just sounds like gibberish from here.
- alwayslikethis 4y ago
  HF? Vinyl chloride does not contain fluorine. It would be HCl instead, which is a naturally occurring mineral acid. The acid rain is going to be a disaster in the short term, but it's not that bad. Phosgene is fairly toxic when inhaled from at a significant concentration, but also dissipates and doesn't stay that long in the atmosphere.
  - op00to 4y ago
    Indeed, VC is associated with much longer lasting chemicals that cause similar damage. VC comparatively lasts very little even in the ground.
King-Aaron 4y ago
One of the chemicals that is produced by burning this delicious cocktail is Phosgene Gas ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene ) which among its numerous delightful uses is a nerve agent
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  No, not a nerve agent. It was used as a "poison gas" in World War I, but it's not a "nerve gas". It will still kill you very effectively, but not by poisoning your nerves.
  - King-Aaron 4y ago
    Ah, got it. Still certainly not something you want to be throwing into the air above towns.
jrmg 4y ago
I’d like to hear what the actual consequences of these leaks and subsequent combustion are without the alarmism (which, even if warranted, doesn’t need to be in every actual explanation of what’s going on!) Right now, I see the EPA saying ‘it’s okay to return to the area’ (not ‘everything is fine’), and alarmist commentators listing chemical names and saying ‘this is bad’ and ‘Bhopal’ with no actual explanation of the mechanisms of ‘bad’. I don’t know what the truth is. I’d _like_ to be able to believe the EPA rather than random internet commentators.
Accujack 4y ago
I posted some things on Reddit about it, but I'll summarize here. There are a lot of alarmist people posting about how they're sure the town is "uninhabitable" and that it's being "covered up". The truth is that the people handling the derailment and fire made some very tough calls to avoid an explosion that might have leveled half that town or exposed hundreds to thousands of people to a carcinogenic chemical. They chose to burn off the chemicals to avoid the explosion. People are scared by the dark cloud and by the smells, and that's understandable. But the burning does seem to have eliminated much of the chemicals on site, and none of the air testing that's being done to look for combustion products or gaseous Vinyl Chloride is finding any. There are pictures of people walking near the destroyed railroad cars now, with no hazmat suits. Vinyl Chloride has a half life in the atmosphere of about 20 hours. It decomposes into CO, CO2, HCl and trace Phosgene (a tiny fraction of a percent). Any Vinyl Chloride Monomer released into the air or soil will be decomposing into acid (once the HCl mixes with atmospheric water) and that acid will have a somewhat higher (weaker) pH than household vinegar. At least with regard to the Vinyl Chloride monomer tanks, the authorities seem to have done the right thing. If they managed to burn off the other tanks, those chemicals create even fewer toxic combustion products - carbon monoxide is basically it. The dark cloud is probably coming from all the other stuff that burned or partly combusted due to that very hot fire... paint on the rail cars, plastics in the box cars, whatever else was in the box cars, railroad ties that caught on fire, and chemicals outgassed from nearby objects exposed to that amount of heat. It's probably not something you'd want to breathe, but it's also not the "cloud of death" that's being clamored about by the conspiritards. Both the air test reports and the pictures of people without masks walking on the site now show that it's likely the burn off achieved the desired effect. Within a few days the dark clouds will dissipate like any other smoke, and people will finally calm down. It's still an awful situation for anyone whose home got covered in smoke or whose animals died due to the derailment or fire, but it's not an apocalypse.

tomcam 4y ago

[flagged]

bruce511 4y ago
I am intrigued by your outrage (seriously). I'm curious to know what you are hoping the world's media will accomplish there? On the one hand train derailment, chemical fire, environmental damage - it makes for a story but really not a terribly interesting one (to me). It's certainly an unwelcome event, but there doesn't seem to be anything deeper than what you see on the surface. Is there a deeper story here? Is there some ongoing malfeasance that should be spotlighted? I completely understand that for those who live in East Palestine this may be a life altering event. But shitty events routinely happen to lots of people every day. I guess I'm missing what makes this special. Of course my sympathies are with those affected by this, I'm not heartless, but I'm (honestly) not sure what you hope the world's media will achieve.
- ticviking 4y ago
  The TL;DR of the ongoing story is the train engineers tried to strike recently over these kinds of issues and our Congress stopped them from doing so. Now it’s an massive disaster that we were warned was coming and the basic measures to fix it(like hiring more engineers and letting them have sick days) won’t happen in a sane way.
  - boppo1 4y ago
    Yeah there's a lot of peop;e asking "why isn't everyone up in arms/hasn't this been all over the news?" The answer is democrats and republicans happily cosigned this check.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    The unions negotiated for more sick/emergency time (supported by Democrats but blocked by Republicans), and argued that working sick/distracted would be a safety risk, but they did not negotiate for the equipment and maintenance changes that would have prevented this derailment. Wikipedia: > The trains were not equipped with electronically controlled pneumatic brakes, which a former Federal Railroad Administration official said would have reduced the severity of the accident.[4] In 2017, Norfolk Southern had successfully lobbied to have regulations requiring their use on trains carrying hazardous materials repealed.[4] > About 48 hours later, the National Transportation Safety Board said it had preliminary findings that a mechanical problem on an axle of one of the cars led to the derailment.[9] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Ohio_train_derailment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Ohio_train_derailment
- sebkomianos 4y ago
  A few questions: 1) Do you think that a town getting poisoned is not "special"? 2) Do you think that the 5000 people that lived on said town are out of life-threatening danger? 3) Do you think it's only said town and said 5000 people that are threatened by this? 4) Don't you think that working conditions need to be regulated in order to be safe? 5) Don't you think that this disaster could help us prevent other ones?
  - worthless-trash 4y ago
    Explain how media sensationalism helps 1-5. The people are already very aware, authorities are already aware, you're already aware. so we can't use the awareness angle.
    - sebkomianos 4y ago
      I don't know what you mean by "sensationalism" so I will only say this: Such disasters need to be heavily reported on because that's the only way for better regulation and prevention. Furthermore, there is things that have to be done for the town to become safe and for the people to be taken care of and compensated. And that's about it, really.
      - worthless-trash 4y ago
        We have a very different view of how media ends up affecting outcomes. I haven't seen many positive outcomes from media involvement, the cycle is too quick and the viewpoints heavily biased.
  - bruce511 4y ago
    I'll preface my answer by saying that "world media" (as mentioned in the parent post) and US Media are different things. If the goal is internal political pressure and accountability then sure US Media attention has some value. World media maybe not so much. 1) alas, in the US context its not really "special". There seems to be an article every 5 minutes about some business prioritising profit over the environment. I agree that its terrible, but unfortunately not special. 2) probably not. But media attention won't change their danger status. 3) absolutely not. Environmentalism, climate change, the ills of profits before environment are well documented and we'll understood. Politically the nation seems divided on thus topic. In an absurd way this event adds very little to the conversation. I think that's bonkers, but I don't think this event will change too many minds. 4) working conditions are already regulated. There are people in favour of more regulation, and some in favour of less. The US has some of the weakest labour regulation in the world (in some respects.) So yes, I think better regulation would be a desirable outcome. Then again that fire is already burning well. This event does little to fan the flames. 5) short answer is, unfortunately no. The root cause of this is profit over environment, profit over people. That's a particular US condition and it is intrinsic to the American psyche. Media attention of this event won't change that, and there's certainly no shortage of upcoming preventable ecological or human disasters waiting to happen. I'm not saying I'm happy with the status quo, but it's not like this is surprising, or frankly even newsworthy. It's life-changing to those folk affected, but the rest of the country don't really care. Which is whacked.
- jandrese 4y ago
  Outrage about this story is directed at Norfolk Southern for operating the train without modern safety gear, for the Trump administration for rescinding the Obama era rules that would have required them to install modern safety gear, and the Biden administration for breaking up the strike that the workers were making over the safety conditions (among other things). This accident was going to happen eventually and all of the people who had the opportunity to stop it were either denied or were actively fighting against preventing it from happening because it might have impacted the $10 billion stock buyback[1] that lined so many billionaire's pockets. [1] http://www.nscorp.com/content/nscorp/en/news/norfolk-southern-announces-new--10-billion-stock-repurchase-prog.html http://www.nscorp.com/content/nscorp/en/news/norfolk-souther...
  - CatWChainsaw 4y ago
    Where's the capitalism good/regulation bad folks who post here? And do they want to take a field trip? :)
- tomcam 4y ago
  Completely valid question. It seems like a pretty big situation. Those usually get tons of press coverage, presidential visits, cabinet-level management, and media scrutiny of all parties involved. This is how problems get solved, and, one hopes, prevented in the future. It’s why planes are so safe. When I was young crashes were much more frequent. I don’t know why Rihanna gets way more attention than Ohio. Or Flint, Michigan. Genuinely interested in your feedback.
  - bruce511 4y ago
    Is it a big situation though? I mean it's not small obviously, but compared to other events (Syria earthquake, war in Ukraine, hurricanes in Puerto Rico, blackouts in Texas, wild fires in California, snow storms across the NE US, Covid etc it seems small. (not unimportant, but small.) Granted this is very man-made, and apparently the result of very human profit motives. Which means politics. Which means its a 5 minute topic until the next political outrage comes along. Ultimately Rihanna gets more attention because discussing that doesn't devolve into a screaming match of the intrinsic americaness of exploitation over environment and people. And just like Flint the media will move on, but there's not a lot of long-term progress. Just like another mass shooting, the politicians will offer hopes and prayers, but won't take any action. I know, I'm jaded and cynical, but frankly media attention means nothing. It doesn't change minds, or votes, so ultimately events like this are just a "cost of doing business". It sucks, but am I wrong?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
anigbrowl 4y ago
Don't understand why the world's media hasn't converged on the area. At least partly because it's not clear that it's safe to hang out there.

akomtu 4y ago

The two "helpful" byproducts of vinyl chloride burning like that is HF and phosgene. The wind is going to spread those rapidly.

kurthr 4y ago
I'm doubtful on the HF since it's not vinyl fluoride. More likely HCl. Likely, there's some phosgene, though I've read that in large fires that mostly get's burned up. Of course there's CO. The liquid remnants are carcinogenic. https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=106993 https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=10699... https://nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/2001.pdf https://nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/2001.pdf
- op00to 4y ago
  There’s not nearly enough F in the air to create HF. Where does the fluorine come from? It’s like 5ppb in the air.
  - kurthr 4y ago
    It doesn't... there is none. Any reporting that says there is likely is confused about other stuff too. I'm open to finding out there was a tank of Fluorine (now that's hazardous cargo!) in a nearby car, but it just sounds like gibberish from here.
alwayslikethis 4y ago
HF? Vinyl chloride does not contain fluorine. It would be HCl instead, which is a naturally occurring mineral acid. The acid rain is going to be a disaster in the short term, but it's not that bad. Phosgene is fairly toxic when inhaled from at a significant concentration, but also dissipates and doesn't stay that long in the atmosphere.
- op00to 4y ago
  Indeed, VC is associated with much longer lasting chemicals that cause similar damage. VC comparatively lasts very little even in the ground.

King-Aaron 4y ago

One of the chemicals that is produced by burning this delicious cocktail is Phosgene Gas ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene ) which among its numerous delightful uses is a nerve agent

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
No, not a nerve agent. It was used as a "poison gas" in World War I, but it's not a "nerve gas". It will still kill you very effectively, but not by poisoning your nerves.
- King-Aaron 4y ago
  Ah, got it. Still certainly not something you want to be throwing into the air above towns.

jrmg 4y ago

I’d like to hear what the actual consequences of these leaks and subsequent combustion are without the alarmism (which, even if warranted, doesn’t need to be in every actual explanation of what’s going on!) Right now, I see the EPA saying ‘it’s okay to return to the area’ (not ‘everything is fine’), and alarmist commentators listing chemical names and saying ‘this is bad’ and ‘Bhopal’ with no actual explanation of the mechanisms of ‘bad’. I don’t know what the truth is. I’d _like_ to be able to believe the EPA rather than random internet commentators.

Accujack 4y ago

I posted some things on Reddit about it, but I'll summarize here. There are a lot of alarmist people posting about how they're sure the town is "uninhabitable" and that it's being "covered up". The truth is that the people handling the derailment and fire made some very tough calls to avoid an explosion that might have leveled half that town or exposed hundreds to thousands of people to a carcinogenic chemical. They chose to burn off the chemicals to avoid the explosion. People are scared by the dark cloud and by the smells, and that's understandable. But the burning does seem to have eliminated much of the chemicals on site, and none of the air testing that's being done to look for combustion products or gaseous Vinyl Chloride is finding any. There are pictures of people walking near the destroyed railroad cars now, with no hazmat suits. Vinyl Chloride has a half life in the atmosphere of about 20 hours. It decomposes into CO, CO2, HCl and trace Phosgene (a tiny fraction of a percent). Any Vinyl Chloride Monomer released into the air or soil will be decomposing into acid (once the HCl mixes with atmospheric water) and that acid will have a somewhat higher (weaker) pH than household vinegar. At least with regard to the Vinyl Chloride monomer tanks, the authorities seem to have done the right thing. If they managed to burn off the other tanks, those chemicals create even fewer toxic combustion products - carbon monoxide is basically it. The dark cloud is probably coming from all the other stuff that burned or partly combusted due to that very hot fire... paint on the rail cars, plastics in the box cars, whatever else was in the box cars, railroad ties that caught on fire, and chemicals outgassed from nearby objects exposed to that amount of heat. It's probably not something you'd want to breathe, but it's also not the "cloud of death" that's being clamored about by the conspiritards. Both the air test reports and the pictures of people without masks walking on the site now show that it's likely the burn off achieved the desired effect. Within a few days the dark clouds will dissipate like any other smoke, and people will finally calm down. It's still an awful situation for anyone whose home got covered in smoke or whose animals died due to the derailment or fire, but it's not an apocalypse.