7 ms·

- "On Sunday, the EPA released a list, written by Norfolk Southern, of the toxic chemicals that were in the derailed cars. In addition to vinyl chloride and but

- "On Sunday, the EPA released a list, written by Norfolk Southern, of the toxic chemicals that were in the derailed cars. In addition to vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate, it mentions ethylhexyl acrylate, which can cause headaches, nausea, and respiratory problems in people exposed to it; as well as isobutylene, which can make people dizzy and drowsy." This is anodyne phrasing that omits the lede, which is that this information was not previously disclosed. This expanded "list of toxic chemicals" was not public prior to Sunday. Here's ABC's reporting by way of comparison: "There were more toxic chemicals on train that derailed in Ohio than originally reported, data shows" https://abcnews.go.com/US/toxic-chemicals-train-derailed-ohio-originally-reported-data/story?id=97080179 https://abcnews.go.com/US/toxic-chemicals-train-derailed-ohi... (Another notable diff is that ABC describes ethylhexyl acrylate as a "carcinogen", linking to a CDC page as a cite. NPR's exposition reads differently: "ethylhexyl acrylate, which can cause headaches, nausea, and respiratory problems in people exposed to it;").

grecy 4y ago
> which can cause headaches, nausea, and respiratory problems.... can make people dizzy and drowsy I also love this phrasing that talks about the immediate uncomfortable reactions, but makes no mention on the extremely serious long-term implications of exposure. These chemicals won't just make you feel unpleasant in the moment, they'll kill you in the long run.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  I mean, I guess "lung cancer" is technically a "respiratory problem" but damn...
- atoav 4y ago
  This. That's like saying a radiation exposure can make you "see funny lights" — while being technically true, this is not the important thing to underline given a situation where such a danger is out there in the environment. Makes you wonder.
- chriscappuccio 4y ago
  The dose makes the poison
  - kalimanzaro 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - xadhominemx 4y ago
      > For vinyl chloride 250ppm for 4 hours is enough to give you tumors. No it’s not! You’ve completely made that up.
      - kalimanzaro 4y ago
        Tu quoque my friend. I merely coped & pasted wikipedia, wanna check the cite? >1972, Maltoni, another Italian researcher for the European vinyl chloride industry, found liver tumors (including angiosarcoma) from vinyl chloride exposures as low as 250 ppm for four hours a day.[30]
        xadhominemx 4y ago
        Per day!
  - whamlastxmas 4y ago
    Unfortunately a single rail car can carry in excess of 30,000 gallons of dosing, and a single train can have several millions of gallons all together.
    - Filligree 4y ago
      How many ppm is that? Tongue in cheek, but assume it all got spread out over the city, I suppose.
      - whamlastxmas 4y ago
- nimbius 4y ago
  > can make people dizzy and drowsy LMFAO vinyl chloride is a multi-organ carcinogen...its literally one of the quickest ways to stage 4 right up there with Benzene exposure. phosgene was also part of the release when Ohio decided a "controlled burn" of the vinyl chloride was somehow a good idea. the plume could be seen from commercial flights. honest to god the damage control media outlets are attempting in the midst of what by every definition is just under a massive environmental disaster is just ridiculous. If this happened in China it would be front page news.
  - gwright 4y ago
    > honest to god the damage control media outlets are attempting in the midst of what by every definition is just under a massive environmental disaster is just ridiculous. If this happened in China it would be front page news. Is it damage control or just some strange calculation that it isn't a story that will attract page views? Both rationales are concerning, but they suggest different pathologies in our media ecosystem.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      It's honestly that there's not much story because it looks worse than it is. Chemicals are counter-intuitive. People don't have a good match for looks-scary to is-scary. I watch the Checmical Safety Board incident report videos from time-to-time. The most common killer in chemical plants? Carbon monoxide: odorless, colorless, tasteless, and simply displaces oxygen. You climb into an enclosed space, have just enough time to realize something's wrong (maybe) before you pass out, and never wake up. The methyl isocyanate that killed in Bhopal rolled along the ground creating a silent blanket of death. A giant black plume climbing into the cloud layer is scary looking but in no way correlated, one way or another, with the actual risk to public safety. Made for great 6 o'clock news footage, but the followup story really is just "Clean the soot off your house and maybe check your basement for any chemical that rolled away before it burned."
      - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
        [flagged]
- Root_Denied 4y ago
  I'm a bit torn on this one because the immediate symptoms are the ones that might indicate exposure and prompt someone to get medical treatment. If you're reading a newspaper or watching mainstream reporting then that's easily the most critical information to have communicated to you. Once you've got a medical record of exposure that also makes it possible to go after these companies for the long term effects, which should be communicated to you by medical professionals based on your exposure time and estimated dosage. I don't like that that's the requirement for our legal system, but it's the reality.
gruez 4y ago
>Another notable diff is that ABC describes ethylhexyl acrylate as a "carcinogen", linking to a CDC page as a cite The linked CDC source doesn't really definitively say it's a carcinogen. The exact quote is "potential occupational carcinogen as defined by the OSHA carcinogen policy [29 CFR 1990]". Also, it's worth noting that the page is for "Ethyl acrylate", not "ethylhexyl acrylate". A google search for "ethylhexyl acrylate" turns up results for 2-ETHYLHEXYL ACRYLATE, which has a different CAS number, so it's unknown whether ABC is even referring to the correct chemical. [1] https://www.chempoint.com/products/download?grade=2716&doctype=sds https://www.chempoint.com/products/download?grade=2716&docty...
- perihelions 4y ago
  That's an egregious error. Good catch! At any rate, 2-ethylhexyl acrylate is *also* a "Group 2B: possibly carcinogenic". (I'd assume it's just the functional group that's interesting here, and the whole class is carcinogenic). - "Methyl acrylate, ethyl acrylate, 2-ethylhexyl acrylate, technical-grade TMPTA, and isobutyl nitrite were classified as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2B), based on “sufficient evidence” of carcinogenicity in experimental animals and no data or inadequate evidence in humans." https://sci-hub.ru/10.1016/s1470-2045(18)30491-1 https://sci-hub.ru/10.1016/s1470-2045(18)30491-1 ("Carcinogenicity of isobutyl nitrite, β-picoline, and some acrylates." The Lancet Oncology 19.8 (2018): 1020-1022.")
- irrational 4y ago
  Presumably we will have positive data on whether it is carcinogenic or not in a few years/decades as we watch what happens to the people In Ohio.
shadowgovt 4y ago
In general, there's no particular need to make the list of chemicals public. In the event of emergency, every container is stamped with one or two standard labels indicating the nature of the chemical threat and what firefighters need to do to address it; otherwise, it's as important to people as what's in the tractor-trailer in front of them on the highway. It might be worth having a discussion about the fact that the way train right-of-ways came into being give municipalities little recourse if they feel the trains shouldn't be cutting through their towns in general, but given that they do, they're basically privately-owned highways and it's up to the owner what's on them.
- rcme 4y ago
  > In general, there's no particular need to make the list of chemicals public. In the event of emergency, every container is stamped with one or two standard labels indicating the nature of the chemical threat and what firefighters need to do to address it What part of the hazard warning indicates what's required for environmental remediation? In order to properly remediate, you need to know what you're dealing with.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    In general, no environmental remediation is necessary because the chemical doesn't spill. If it spills, of course there should be disclosure. Parent appeared to be expressing surprise there was no disclosure until an incident occurred; of course there wasn't. (Disclosure takes more time than we assume it should because freight is actually kinda disorganized relative to what most of us would expect given our information-saturated jobs; when a shipment leaves the depot and arrives, you can just check the contents of the train, but when it fails to arrive, you have to piece together the contents from multiple manifest sources and cross-check to make sure there weren't errors in that data).
    - rcme 4y ago
      That's not how I read the original comment: > This is anodyne phrasing that omits the lede, which is that this information was not previously disclosed. This expanded "list of toxic chemicals" was not public prior to Sunday. The accident happened on February 3rd. And the chemicals started being released on the 6th. Sunday was the 12th. That's a long time to wait to disclose the types of chemicals you're releasing in a town.
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
Finally, what can these chemicals react into when in a blaze.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  That's extremely well known, which is why the remediation strategy was to intentionally set them on fire.
- kurthr 4y ago
  There's a small amount of phosgene, but mostly nothing worse than when they started (which are fairly nasty). Lot's of CO and CO2, but it's the liquid runoff that's more concerning. It'll be a haz-waste site for decades.
  - mcguire 4y ago
    And hydrogen chloride.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    Vinyl chloride degrades in air 99% in 100 days and doesn't bio-accumulate. It'll be a source of 14-CO2 for about a year, tops.
    - kurthr 4y ago
      It's the stuff that's subsurface (ground water?) that'll last. Agree, that if it's exposed to air and sunlight it won't last long... too reactive.
      - shadowgovt 4y ago
        It doesn't appear vinyl chloride wants to stay in water, based on the numbers I'm seeing (https://semspub.epa.gov/work/05/437069.pdf https://semspub.epa.gov/work/05/437069.pdf). The instances of vinyl chloride contamination tend to be from an actively-producing source, like a plant with a leak. Spilled on the ground and absorbed into water, it should evaporate into gaseous form in a matter of hours.
legitster 4y ago
It's listed as a "possible carcinogen". Which would put it in the same category as caffeine. Although it's worth noting that while caffeine would obviously not be that dangerous of a chemical, a giant spill of it would still be an environmental issue.
- eurasiantiger 4y ago
  Caffeine is absolutely deadly toxic to many organisms, including humans. Five grams and you’re very likely to end up dead.
  - luckman212 4y ago
    Isn't 5g around 60 cups of coffee? Over what span of time would those need to be ingested?
    - jackvalentine 4y ago
      https://purewellness.com.au/product/pure-usp-pharma-grade-caffeine-anhydrous/ https://purewellness.com.au/product/pure-usp-pharma-grade-ca...
    - eurasiantiger 4y ago
      Depends heavily on the type of coffee. The monoamine oxidase inhibitors in coffee could kill you first by causing serotonin syndrome.

grecy 4y ago

> which can cause headaches, nausea, and respiratory problems.... can make people dizzy and drowsy I also love this phrasing that talks about the immediate uncomfortable reactions, but makes no mention on the extremely serious long-term implications of exposure. These chemicals won't just make you feel unpleasant in the moment, they'll kill you in the long run.

throwaway894345 4y ago
I mean, I guess "lung cancer" is technically a "respiratory problem" but damn...
atoav 4y ago
This. That's like saying a radiation exposure can make you "see funny lights" — while being technically true, this is not the important thing to underline given a situation where such a danger is out there in the environment. Makes you wonder.
chriscappuccio 4y ago
The dose makes the poison
- kalimanzaro 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - xadhominemx 4y ago
    > For vinyl chloride 250ppm for 4 hours is enough to give you tumors. No it’s not! You’ve completely made that up.
    - kalimanzaro 4y ago
      Tu quoque my friend. I merely coped & pasted wikipedia, wanna check the cite? >1972, Maltoni, another Italian researcher for the European vinyl chloride industry, found liver tumors (including angiosarcoma) from vinyl chloride exposures as low as 250 ppm for four hours a day.[30]
      - xadhominemx 4y ago
        Per day!
- whamlastxmas 4y ago
  Unfortunately a single rail car can carry in excess of 30,000 gallons of dosing, and a single train can have several millions of gallons all together.
  - Filligree 4y ago
    How many ppm is that? Tongue in cheek, but assume it all got spread out over the city, I suppose.
    - whamlastxmas 4y ago
nimbius 4y ago
> can make people dizzy and drowsy LMFAO vinyl chloride is a multi-organ carcinogen...its literally one of the quickest ways to stage 4 right up there with Benzene exposure. phosgene was also part of the release when Ohio decided a "controlled burn" of the vinyl chloride was somehow a good idea. the plume could be seen from commercial flights. honest to god the damage control media outlets are attempting in the midst of what by every definition is just under a massive environmental disaster is just ridiculous. If this happened in China it would be front page news.
- gwright 4y ago
  > honest to god the damage control media outlets are attempting in the midst of what by every definition is just under a massive environmental disaster is just ridiculous. If this happened in China it would be front page news. Is it damage control or just some strange calculation that it isn't a story that will attract page views? Both rationales are concerning, but they suggest different pathologies in our media ecosystem.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    It's honestly that there's not much story because it looks worse than it is. Chemicals are counter-intuitive. People don't have a good match for looks-scary to is-scary. I watch the Checmical Safety Board incident report videos from time-to-time. The most common killer in chemical plants? Carbon monoxide: odorless, colorless, tasteless, and simply displaces oxygen. You climb into an enclosed space, have just enough time to realize something's wrong (maybe) before you pass out, and never wake up. The methyl isocyanate that killed in Bhopal rolled along the ground creating a silent blanket of death. A giant black plume climbing into the cloud layer is scary looking but in no way correlated, one way or another, with the actual risk to public safety. Made for great 6 o'clock news footage, but the followup story really is just "Clean the soot off your house and maybe check your basement for any chemical that rolled away before it burned."
    - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
      [flagged]
Root_Denied 4y ago
I'm a bit torn on this one because the immediate symptoms are the ones that might indicate exposure and prompt someone to get medical treatment. If you're reading a newspaper or watching mainstream reporting then that's easily the most critical information to have communicated to you. Once you've got a medical record of exposure that also makes it possible to go after these companies for the long term effects, which should be communicated to you by medical professionals based on your exposure time and estimated dosage. I don't like that that's the requirement for our legal system, but it's the reality.

gruez 4y ago

>Another notable diff is that ABC describes ethylhexyl acrylate as a "carcinogen", linking to a CDC page as a cite The linked CDC source doesn't really definitively say it's a carcinogen. The exact quote is "potential occupational carcinogen as defined by the OSHA carcinogen policy [29 CFR 1990]". Also, it's worth noting that the page is for "Ethyl acrylate", not "ethylhexyl acrylate". A google search for "ethylhexyl acrylate" turns up results for 2-ETHYLHEXYL ACRYLATE, which has a different CAS number, so it's unknown whether ABC is even referring to the correct chemical. [1] https://www.chempoint.com/products/download?grade=2716&doctype=sds https://www.chempoint.com/products/download?grade=2716&docty...

perihelions 4y ago
That's an egregious error. Good catch! At any rate, 2-ethylhexyl acrylate is *also* a "Group 2B: possibly carcinogenic". (I'd assume it's just the functional group that's interesting here, and the whole class is carcinogenic). - "Methyl acrylate, ethyl acrylate, 2-ethylhexyl acrylate, technical-grade TMPTA, and isobutyl nitrite were classified as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2B), based on “sufficient evidence” of carcinogenicity in experimental animals and no data or inadequate evidence in humans." https://sci-hub.ru/10.1016/s1470-2045(18)30491-1 https://sci-hub.ru/10.1016/s1470-2045(18)30491-1 ("Carcinogenicity of isobutyl nitrite, β-picoline, and some acrylates." The Lancet Oncology 19.8 (2018): 1020-1022.")
irrational 4y ago
Presumably we will have positive data on whether it is carcinogenic or not in a few years/decades as we watch what happens to the people In Ohio.

shadowgovt 4y ago

In general, there's no particular need to make the list of chemicals public. In the event of emergency, every container is stamped with one or two standard labels indicating the nature of the chemical threat and what firefighters need to do to address it; otherwise, it's as important to people as what's in the tractor-trailer in front of them on the highway. It might be worth having a discussion about the fact that the way train right-of-ways came into being give municipalities little recourse if they feel the trains shouldn't be cutting through their towns in general, but given that they do, they're basically privately-owned highways and it's up to the owner what's on them.

rcme 4y ago
> In general, there's no particular need to make the list of chemicals public. In the event of emergency, every container is stamped with one or two standard labels indicating the nature of the chemical threat and what firefighters need to do to address it What part of the hazard warning indicates what's required for environmental remediation? In order to properly remediate, you need to know what you're dealing with.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  In general, no environmental remediation is necessary because the chemical doesn't spill. If it spills, of course there should be disclosure. Parent appeared to be expressing surprise there was no disclosure until an incident occurred; of course there wasn't. (Disclosure takes more time than we assume it should because freight is actually kinda disorganized relative to what most of us would expect given our information-saturated jobs; when a shipment leaves the depot and arrives, you can just check the contents of the train, but when it fails to arrive, you have to piece together the contents from multiple manifest sources and cross-check to make sure there weren't errors in that data).
  - rcme 4y ago
    That's not how I read the original comment: > This is anodyne phrasing that omits the lede, which is that this information was not previously disclosed. This expanded "list of toxic chemicals" was not public prior to Sunday. The accident happened on February 3rd. And the chemicals started being released on the 6th. Sunday was the 12th. That's a long time to wait to disclose the types of chemicals you're releasing in a town.

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

Finally, what can these chemicals react into when in a blaze.

shadowgovt 4y ago
That's extremely well known, which is why the remediation strategy was to intentionally set them on fire.
kurthr 4y ago
There's a small amount of phosgene, but mostly nothing worse than when they started (which are fairly nasty). Lot's of CO and CO2, but it's the liquid runoff that's more concerning. It'll be a haz-waste site for decades.
- mcguire 4y ago
  And hydrogen chloride.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  Vinyl chloride degrades in air 99% in 100 days and doesn't bio-accumulate. It'll be a source of 14-CO2 for about a year, tops.
  - kurthr 4y ago
    It's the stuff that's subsurface (ground water?) that'll last. Agree, that if it's exposed to air and sunlight it won't last long... too reactive.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      It doesn't appear vinyl chloride wants to stay in water, based on the numbers I'm seeing (https://semspub.epa.gov/work/05/437069.pdf https://semspub.epa.gov/work/05/437069.pdf). The instances of vinyl chloride contamination tend to be from an actively-producing source, like a plant with a leak. Spilled on the ground and absorbed into water, it should evaporate into gaseous form in a matter of hours.

legitster 4y ago

It's listed as a "possible carcinogen". Which would put it in the same category as caffeine. Although it's worth noting that while caffeine would obviously not be that dangerous of a chemical, a giant spill of it would still be an environmental issue.

eurasiantiger 4y ago
Caffeine is absolutely deadly toxic to many organisms, including humans. Five grams and you’re very likely to end up dead.
- luckman212 4y ago
  Isn't 5g around 60 cups of coffee? Over what span of time would those need to be ingested?
  - jackvalentine 4y ago
    https://purewellness.com.au/product/pure-usp-pharma-grade-caffeine-anhydrous/ https://purewellness.com.au/product/pure-usp-pharma-grade-ca...
  - eurasiantiger 4y ago
    Depends heavily on the type of coffee. The monoamine oxidase inhibitors in coffee could kill you first by causing serotonin syndrome.