6 ms·

> which can cause headaches, nausea, and respiratory problems.... can make people dizzy and drowsy I also love this phrasing that talks about the immediate unc

by 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
      This looks very difficult to calculate unless you're already familiar with the dynamics at play. Here's an extremely relevant paper from 2019 on the topic: https://www.consiltant.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/20190911-Health-effects-due-to-evaporation-of-liquids.pdf https://www.consiltant.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/201909... > the speed [of evaporation] is determined by, among other things, the pressure in the system, temperature of the substance, substance properties such as boiling point, vapor pressure, molecular weight and density and of course the size of the hole. Trying to do napkin math of dividing 30,000 gallons into the volume of air over a city under a certain altitude seems like a pointless exercise given the very long list of parameters that would highly influence its dispersion.
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.

by grecy 4y ago

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
    This looks very difficult to calculate unless you're already familiar with the dynamics at play. Here's an extremely relevant paper from 2019 on the topic: https://www.consiltant.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/20190911-Health-effects-due-to-evaporation-of-liquids.pdf https://www.consiltant.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/201909... > the speed [of evaporation] is determined by, among other things, the pressure in the system, temperature of the substance, substance properties such as boiling point, vapor pressure, molecular weight and density and of course the size of the hole. Trying to do napkin math of dividing 30,000 gallons into the volume of air over a city under a certain altitude seems like a pointless exercise given the very long list of parameters that would highly influence its dispersion.

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.