6 ms·

It Is Happening Again: Industrial toxicity without industrial employment

100 points by thatsso1999 4y ago

xeromal 4y ago
Dang, can we get the title changed to "It Is Happening Again: Industrial toxicity without industrial employment". I don't think title offers much info as is.
- bitsinthesky 4y ago
  "It is Happening Again: I'm Clicking on Clickbait" is what went through my mind as I clicked on it
  - singleshot_ 4y ago
    "It Is Happening Again: We Are Discussing Authoritarians As If They Are To Be Tolerated" struck me around the 60% mark.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  The most effective way to get mods' attention is to email hn@ycombinator.com (I've done so suggesting the title alteration you've made here.)
  - dang 4y ago
    Thanks! done now
- dang 4y ago
  Sure, done.
ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
Regulations stifle innovation. What's a few ecological disasters in the name of progress?
- readthenotes1 4y ago
  Not that this brightens your day, but it's not just the evil and/or short-sighted capitalists: "Scientists working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks." Pride is a stronger motivator than greed. https://news.yahoo.com/fauci-argued-benefits-gain-function-185934217.html https://news.yahoo.com/fauci-argued-benefits-gain-function-1...
  - justinclift 4y ago
    "Some of you may lose your lives in this endeavour, but that is a risk I'm willing to take." ;)
  - lupire 4y ago
    Fauci's argument was that pandemics happen naturally, so it would be better to get ahead of them in the lab. Was he wrong? Maybe. Or maybe Covid was totally natural and we needed GoF research to help with vaccines. Fauci also acknowledged the validity of concerns, in that same paper. Is it bad to run a biolab next to a naturally virus -heavy environment? Probably. Is it bad to trust the Chinese Communiat Party with a biolab,given their decades long record of oppression the Chinese epoeple and suppression of the press? Probably. Vinyl Chloride gas clouds, by contrast, never appear naturally.
    - readthenotes1 4y ago
      Is it wrong to hide a dangerous experiment in a foreign country that has been explicitly forbidden in the United States because it is so dangerous? I think the answer to that should be obvious.
- smitty1e 4y ago
  It's all fun and games until some else's carelessness drive oneself into penury. At that point, all of the taxes one has paid to fund a government that is supposed to referee these matters... may result in some scant comfort.
- 4y ago
kcplate 4y ago
I can’t get over the pompous writing of this article. It was so distracting I had to move on.
- mplanchard 4y ago
  For being a crowd that I imagine would often classify itself as intellectual, HN can be surprisingly intolerant of writing with any degree of flair or (non-technical) complexity.
  - ajross 4y ago
    It's one thing to fling around some words for fun in a web forum. It's rather another to put up an essay on a serious topic with this kind of ornamentation. It makes it look like the author is selling something. If I want to read a policy paper on rail safety regulation, I want it dry. Give me events, causes, remedies, suggestions, costs. I don't want to read a stump speech. And in point of fact there aren't any remedies or reasoned argument here, it's all yelling and finger pointing. How might this have been prevented? Why did it happen in the first place (FWIW: we don't actually know yet, AFAIK). How else might we ship these compounds? Do we need to? What industries are they serving? That's the stuff I want to hear.
    - hinata08 4y ago
      Read some NTSB reports for dry reports Or CSB videos on YT Or some TV shows like Seconds from Disaster or that Air crash one. or listen to industrial engineers when they do their simulations and Fault trees and HAZOP shenanigans there are a lot of publications and books and even university courses about how to study the functional safety of systems. However, all of these dry "remedies, suggestions, costs" only make sense when you can have the "stump speech" about what you want. You need to discuss what industries you want, and what risks do you accept. When you study a risk, you can avoid it (no go), transfer it (mostly to insurance companies), mitigate it (with these new practices and technical solutions you called for, to reduce frequency and/or impact) or accept it (all green). The articles underlines how the current risk of derailment was known and accepted by the Department of Transportation. There was nothing more to do technologically, if the risk was accepted as it was. If you want a remedy or suggestions, go see the government and the companies to tell them chemicals plumes aren't acceptable when they happen every few years. Technical solutions will come, if they want to continue to operate trains but more safely.
petermcneeley 4y ago
plus one to the icon of this page.
mturmon 4y ago
Impressionistic review of the repeated industrial accidents in Ohio, written by someone who originated from the area, in the light of the wearied, sleepwalking response to the latest one in East Palestine, Ohio.
goodSteveramos 4y ago
[flagged]
- andrekandre 4y ago
  > The only way to prove me wrong is to actually give these people somewhere safe to stay. actually, the burden of proof is on you firstly, since you are the one making the initial claim that this is happening "because they are white"
  - goodSteveramos 4y ago
    Notice how your comment os not a reason to get these people help and mine is. Unless you think the US government will deliberately punish White people by not helping them if they call foul, which would only prove my point further.
thatsso1999 4y ago
“More than a week after the crash, CNN discovered that some East Palestine residents had served as extras in the recent Netflix film adaptation of Don DeLillo’s White Noise—specifically while filming the novel’s “Airborne Toxic Event” sequence, in which an errant rail car spills chemicals that produce a noxious black cloud over a midwestern town.” Hadn’t heard this tidbit about the crash before, what a truly insane coincidence. The airborne toxic event in the novel/movie causes deja vu, too.
- starkd 4y ago
  Very good novel, but very different. Don Delillo has a very unique writing style. His novels reflect some very keen insights into contemporary life.
starkd 4y ago
>> And precisely because they were nuclear accidents, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl left their surroundings contaminated for years, even decades. Perhaps a small point, but the incident at Three Mile Island did not lead contaminate surroundings for years. Or at least, the extent is somewhat disputed. From wiki: According to the American Nuclear Society, using the official radioactivity emission figures, "The average radiation dose to people living within 10 miles of the plant was eight millirem (0.08 mSv), and no more than 100 millirem (1 mSv) to any single individual. Eight millirem is about equal to a chest X-ray, and 100 millirem is about a third of the average background level of radiation received by US residents in a year." Although some epidemiological studies cast some doubt on that: A peer-reviewed research article by Dr. Steven Wing found a significant increase in cancers between 1979 and 1985 among people who lived within ten miles of TMI.[113] In 2009 Dr. Wing stated that radiation releases during the accident were probably "thousands of times greater" than the NRC's estimates. A retrospective study of Pennsylvania Cancer Registry found an increased incidence of thyroid cancer in some counties south of TMI (although, notably, not in Dauphin County itself) and in high-risk age groups but did not draw a causal link between these incidences and the accident.[13][14] The Talbott lab at the University of Pittsburgh reported finding a few, small increased cancer risks within the TMI population.[15] A more recent study reached "findings consistent with observations from other radiation-exposed populations," raising "the possibility that radiation released from [Three Mile Island] may have altered the molecular profile of [thyroid cancer] in the population surrounding TMI", establishing a potential causal mechanism, although not definitively proving causation.[114] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

100 points by thatsso1999 4y ago

Dang, can we get the title changed to "It Is Happening Again: Industrial toxicity without industrial employment". I don't think title offers much info as is.

bitsinthesky 4y ago
"It is Happening Again: I'm Clicking on Clickbait" is what went through my mind as I clicked on it
- singleshot_ 4y ago
  "It Is Happening Again: We Are Discussing Authoritarians As If They Are To Be Tolerated" struck me around the 60% mark.
dredmorbius 4y ago
The most effective way to get mods' attention is to email hn@ycombinator.com (I've done so suggesting the title alteration you've made here.)
- dang 4y ago
  Thanks! done now
dang 4y ago
Sure, done.

ThrowawayTestr 4y ago

Regulations stifle innovation. What's a few ecological disasters in the name of progress?

readthenotes1 4y ago
Not that this brightens your day, but it's not just the evil and/or short-sighted capitalists: "Scientists working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks." Pride is a stronger motivator than greed. https://news.yahoo.com/fauci-argued-benefits-gain-function-185934217.html https://news.yahoo.com/fauci-argued-benefits-gain-function-1...
- justinclift 4y ago
  "Some of you may lose your lives in this endeavour, but that is a risk I'm willing to take." ;)
- lupire 4y ago
  Fauci's argument was that pandemics happen naturally, so it would be better to get ahead of them in the lab. Was he wrong? Maybe. Or maybe Covid was totally natural and we needed GoF research to help with vaccines. Fauci also acknowledged the validity of concerns, in that same paper. Is it bad to run a biolab next to a naturally virus -heavy environment? Probably. Is it bad to trust the Chinese Communiat Party with a biolab,given their decades long record of oppression the Chinese epoeple and suppression of the press? Probably. Vinyl Chloride gas clouds, by contrast, never appear naturally.
  - readthenotes1 4y ago
    Is it wrong to hide a dangerous experiment in a foreign country that has been explicitly forbidden in the United States because it is so dangerous? I think the answer to that should be obvious.
smitty1e 4y ago
It's all fun and games until some else's carelessness drive oneself into penury. At that point, all of the taxes one has paid to fund a government that is supposed to referee these matters... may result in some scant comfort.
4y ago

kcplate 4y ago

I can’t get over the pompous writing of this article. It was so distracting I had to move on.

mplanchard 4y ago
For being a crowd that I imagine would often classify itself as intellectual, HN can be surprisingly intolerant of writing with any degree of flair or (non-technical) complexity.
- ajross 4y ago
  It's one thing to fling around some words for fun in a web forum. It's rather another to put up an essay on a serious topic with this kind of ornamentation. It makes it look like the author is selling something. If I want to read a policy paper on rail safety regulation, I want it dry. Give me events, causes, remedies, suggestions, costs. I don't want to read a stump speech. And in point of fact there aren't any remedies or reasoned argument here, it's all yelling and finger pointing. How might this have been prevented? Why did it happen in the first place (FWIW: we don't actually know yet, AFAIK). How else might we ship these compounds? Do we need to? What industries are they serving? That's the stuff I want to hear.
  - hinata08 4y ago
    Read some NTSB reports for dry reports Or CSB videos on YT Or some TV shows like Seconds from Disaster or that Air crash one. or listen to industrial engineers when they do their simulations and Fault trees and HAZOP shenanigans there are a lot of publications and books and even university courses about how to study the functional safety of systems. However, all of these dry "remedies, suggestions, costs" only make sense when you can have the "stump speech" about what you want. You need to discuss what industries you want, and what risks do you accept. When you study a risk, you can avoid it (no go), transfer it (mostly to insurance companies), mitigate it (with these new practices and technical solutions you called for, to reduce frequency and/or impact) or accept it (all green). The articles underlines how the current risk of derailment was known and accepted by the Department of Transportation. There was nothing more to do technologically, if the risk was accepted as it was. If you want a remedy or suggestions, go see the government and the companies to tell them chemicals plumes aren't acceptable when they happen every few years. Technical solutions will come, if they want to continue to operate trains but more safely.

petermcneeley 4y ago

plus one to the icon of this page.

mturmon 4y ago

Impressionistic review of the repeated industrial accidents in Ohio, written by someone who originated from the area, in the light of the wearied, sleepwalking response to the latest one in East Palestine, Ohio.

goodSteveramos 4y ago

[flagged]

andrekandre 4y ago
> The only way to prove me wrong is to actually give these people somewhere safe to stay. actually, the burden of proof is on you firstly, since you are the one making the initial claim that this is happening "because they are white"
- goodSteveramos 4y ago
  Notice how your comment os not a reason to get these people help and mine is. Unless you think the US government will deliberately punish White people by not helping them if they call foul, which would only prove my point further.

thatsso1999 4y ago

“More than a week after the crash, CNN discovered that some East Palestine residents had served as extras in the recent Netflix film adaptation of Don DeLillo’s White Noise—specifically while filming the novel’s “Airborne Toxic Event” sequence, in which an errant rail car spills chemicals that produce a noxious black cloud over a midwestern town.” Hadn’t heard this tidbit about the crash before, what a truly insane coincidence. The airborne toxic event in the novel/movie causes deja vu, too.

starkd 4y ago
Very good novel, but very different. Don Delillo has a very unique writing style. His novels reflect some very keen insights into contemporary life.

starkd 4y ago

>> And precisely because they were nuclear accidents, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl left their surroundings contaminated for years, even decades. Perhaps a small point, but the incident at Three Mile Island did not lead contaminate surroundings for years. Or at least, the extent is somewhat disputed. From wiki: According to the American Nuclear Society, using the official radioactivity emission figures, "The average radiation dose to people living within 10 miles of the plant was eight millirem (0.08 mSv), and no more than 100 millirem (1 mSv) to any single individual. Eight millirem is about equal to a chest X-ray, and 100 millirem is about a third of the average background level of radiation received by US residents in a year." Although some epidemiological studies cast some doubt on that: A peer-reviewed research article by Dr. Steven Wing found a significant increase in cancers between 1979 and 1985 among people who lived within ten miles of TMI.[113] In 2009 Dr. Wing stated that radiation releases during the accident were probably "thousands of times greater" than the NRC's estimates. A retrospective study of Pennsylvania Cancer Registry found an increased incidence of thyroid cancer in some counties south of TMI (although, notably, not in Dauphin County itself) and in high-risk age groups but did not draw a causal link between these incidences and the accident.[13][14] The Talbott lab at the University of Pittsburgh reported finding a few, small increased cancer risks within the TMI population.[15] A more recent study reached "findings consistent with observations from other radiation-exposed populations," raising "the possibility that radiation released from [Three Mile Island] may have altered the molecular profile of [thyroid cancer] in the population surrounding TMI", establishing a potential causal mechanism, although not definitively proving causation.[114] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident