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This has echos of the Flint water crisis all over it. The "trust authorities" crowd would have happily let Flint residents drink yellow water until lead poisone

by yunwal 4y ago

This has echos of the Flint water crisis all over it. The "trust authorities" crowd would have happily let Flint residents drink yellow water until lead poisoned an entire generation. Turns out, people are right to question things that don't pass their smell test. Sometimes, there's a reasonable explanation, other times there's not

shadowgovt 4y ago
Question, yes, but then the question needs an answer. "Just asking questions" with no follow-up is just signal-jamming. Follow-up on the question in Flint found both elevated lead levels in kids and a mechanism by which the changed purification process released previously-fixated lead in pipes. In contrast, this is a big scary smoke cloud of a well-understood volatile compound that we've spilled into the ecosystem in the past and already tracked the effects of. We know what vinyl chloride, phosgene, and hydrochloric acid do.
- yunwal 4y ago
  > In contrast, this is a big scary smoke cloud of a well-understood volatile compound that we've spilled into the ecosystem in the past In past events, vinyl chloride was not burned, and minimal amounts of it went unrecovered. We also know that hydrogen chloride is a byproduct of burning vinyl chloride, and when combined with water, makes hydrochloric acid, which is not good to come into contact with, and has killed many of the fish in East Palestine. We know vinyl chloride is a cancer-and-birth-defect-causing carcinogen. We also have seen some evidence that animals nearby are dropping dead and humans feeling sick. We also know that the rail company, purposefully or not, did not accurately tell officials which chemicals were released. We also know in the past that corporations responsible for ecological disasters have repeatedly downplayed the incidents. We also know that a reporter was wrongfully arrested for asking questions about the incident. We also know that rail union leaders were talking about the exact safety concerns that led to this derailment, and were told to suck it up by strikebreaking federal officials. The correct thing to do is not dismiss concerns, but to put in place measures to stop corner-cutting and provide guidance to residents of East Palestine that isn't just "don't worry about it". There are real concerns here and no one is providing real evidence that things are safe.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    > We also have seen some evidence that animals nearby are dropping dead and humans feeling sick. This is precisely the kind of decontextualized data that leads to inaccurate conclusions. Without data on normal animal die-off rates, there's no reason to believe finding dead animals is unusual in this part of town. And of course people feel sick; they've been told they were exposed to a scary chemical. It's going to be very hard to separate psychosomatic effect from physiological effect. (The dead fish are probably directly causal. Swimming in hydrochloric acid will do that. But they can also directly sample the water to figure out if the HCL levels are dangerous for human consumption or contact, and I've seen no reporting to suggest that is the case; fish are way more sensitive to water quality than humans). > The correct thing to do is not dismiss concerns, but to put in place measures to stop corner-cutting No argument there. Independent of this specific accident, we know there's a pattern of accident rate increase that indicates a culture of lax safety standsrds (and I completely believe the rail workers who have told us they are heavily incentivized to cut those corners). That should stop. > and provide guidance to residents of East Palestine that isn't just "don't worry about it". Unfortunately, that is the only guidance in the absence of other data. Otherwise, proving "everything is fine" is proving a negative. Is the question "is their risk higher than last month?" Yes. "How much higher?" Pretty much not very much if they didn't get sick by now. "What should we do?" They're doing it in the form of burning off the carcinogen and checking low-lying areas for any escaped volatiles. What else is there? For an average citizen, they may as well go pray to whatever god they believe in; it's as useful a preventative as anything else they could do.
    - yunwal 4y ago
      > But they can also directly sample the water to figure out if the HCL levels are dangerous for human consumption or contact, and I've seen no reporting to suggest that is the case But they have not yet done this, and tests are a week out. FEMA hasn't provided food or resources to residents of East Palestine. Churches in Youngstown are traveling en masse to provide any kind of support. There's videos of entire coops of chickens dying out. But oh, this is all just a misunderstanding? Sorry, but are you f***ing kidding me? When are you gonna start looking with your eyes rather than listening to what people with clear conflicts-of-interest are telling you? I bet you thought there was nothing to be done about Uvalde too, huh?

by yunwal 4y ago

shadowgovt 4y ago

Question, yes, but then the question needs an answer. "Just asking questions" with no follow-up is just signal-jamming. Follow-up on the question in Flint found both elevated lead levels in kids and a mechanism by which the changed purification process released previously-fixated lead in pipes. In contrast, this is a big scary smoke cloud of a well-understood volatile compound that we've spilled into the ecosystem in the past and already tracked the effects of. We know what vinyl chloride, phosgene, and hydrochloric acid do.

yunwal 4y ago
> In contrast, this is a big scary smoke cloud of a well-understood volatile compound that we've spilled into the ecosystem in the past In past events, vinyl chloride was not burned, and minimal amounts of it went unrecovered. We also know that hydrogen chloride is a byproduct of burning vinyl chloride, and when combined with water, makes hydrochloric acid, which is not good to come into contact with, and has killed many of the fish in East Palestine. We know vinyl chloride is a cancer-and-birth-defect-causing carcinogen. We also have seen some evidence that animals nearby are dropping dead and humans feeling sick. We also know that the rail company, purposefully or not, did not accurately tell officials which chemicals were released. We also know in the past that corporations responsible for ecological disasters have repeatedly downplayed the incidents. We also know that a reporter was wrongfully arrested for asking questions about the incident. We also know that rail union leaders were talking about the exact safety concerns that led to this derailment, and were told to suck it up by strikebreaking federal officials. The correct thing to do is not dismiss concerns, but to put in place measures to stop corner-cutting and provide guidance to residents of East Palestine that isn't just "don't worry about it". There are real concerns here and no one is providing real evidence that things are safe.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  > We also have seen some evidence that animals nearby are dropping dead and humans feeling sick. This is precisely the kind of decontextualized data that leads to inaccurate conclusions. Without data on normal animal die-off rates, there's no reason to believe finding dead animals is unusual in this part of town. And of course people feel sick; they've been told they were exposed to a scary chemical. It's going to be very hard to separate psychosomatic effect from physiological effect. (The dead fish are probably directly causal. Swimming in hydrochloric acid will do that. But they can also directly sample the water to figure out if the HCL levels are dangerous for human consumption or contact, and I've seen no reporting to suggest that is the case; fish are way more sensitive to water quality than humans). > The correct thing to do is not dismiss concerns, but to put in place measures to stop corner-cutting No argument there. Independent of this specific accident, we know there's a pattern of accident rate increase that indicates a culture of lax safety standsrds (and I completely believe the rail workers who have told us they are heavily incentivized to cut those corners). That should stop. > and provide guidance to residents of East Palestine that isn't just "don't worry about it". Unfortunately, that is the only guidance in the absence of other data. Otherwise, proving "everything is fine" is proving a negative. Is the question "is their risk higher than last month?" Yes. "How much higher?" Pretty much not very much if they didn't get sick by now. "What should we do?" They're doing it in the form of burning off the carcinogen and checking low-lying areas for any escaped volatiles. What else is there? For an average citizen, they may as well go pray to whatever god they believe in; it's as useful a preventative as anything else they could do.
  - yunwal 4y ago
    > But they can also directly sample the water to figure out if the HCL levels are dangerous for human consumption or contact, and I've seen no reporting to suggest that is the case But they have not yet done this, and tests are a week out. FEMA hasn't provided food or resources to residents of East Palestine. Churches in Youngstown are traveling en masse to provide any kind of support. There's videos of entire coops of chickens dying out. But oh, this is all just a misunderstanding? Sorry, but are you f***ing kidding me? When are you gonna start looking with your eyes rather than listening to what people with clear conflicts-of-interest are telling you? I bet you thought there was nothing to be done about Uvalde too, huh?