5 ms·

After Katrina, almost 1400 people died, and 80% of the city of New Orleans (population ~400,000) was flooded for weeks. No one died in the East Palestine incid

After Katrina, almost 1400 people died, and 80% of the city of New Orleans (population ~400,000) was flooded for weeks. No one died in the East Palestine incident. Hard to see the equivalence.

haswell 4y ago
> No one died in the East Palestine incident. Hard to see the equivalence. It seems very premature to draw such a conclusion. If people start dying of cancer in high numbers a few years down the line, any early claims about the non-impact of this spill will age poorly. Regarding Katrina, we have the benefit of hindsight and enough time passing to have gotten a handle on the impact and it’s worth noting that those 1,400 deaths did not occur overnight. If you made an assessment of Katrina’s impact prematurely, such an assessment would be unlikely to capture the true impact of the event. A premature assessment wouldn’t have even considered including ~300-400 of the people who eventually died in health care facilities after the fact.
- cma 4y ago
  How much worse is burning this stuff than a vinyl siding apartment complex fire? Back of the envelope they burned about 2 orders of magnitude more material than in a large one of those, but were maybe in a 2 orders of magnitude less dense population area than those often take place in. Does the vinyl chloride precursor burn into much worse stuff than the polyvinyl version, for equal masses? I get that it might cross some threshold for acute effects for people right near by that the other fires may never cause even for direct neighbors.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  It's not premature when after Katrina, by this point in time, the death toll was over 100. The East Palestine disaster is still clocking a zero (thankfully).
  - haswell 4y ago
    The death toll at this time during Katrina tells us nothing about what to expect in this completely orthogonal scenario, unless you believe that the mortality associated with a category 5 hurricane plays out on the same timescale as exposure to these particular chemicals. It's simply not a useful analogy. I think it would also be unwise to draw unfounded conclusions about deaths-to-come as if they're some foregone conclusion, because we are in a stage of not knowing the full impact of what happened. At the same time, we also live in a world where we now understand the long term impacts of things like asbestos and a myriad of other chemicals/substances, and concern seems warranted.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      But this is neither the first spill of vinyl chloride nor the first train derailment releasing toxic chemicals. We actually have plenty of data on these kinds of disasters to have a fairly confident model of what to expect.
      - haswell 4y ago
        Has the equivalency of this spill to past spills been established? I haven’t found anything confirming that this spill is believed to match the characteristics of other spills in such a way that would alleviate concerns.

After Katrina, almost 1400 people died, and 80% of the city of New Orleans (population ~400,000) was flooded for weeks. No one died in the East Palestine incident. Hard to see the equivalence.

haswell 4y ago

> No one died in the East Palestine incident. Hard to see the equivalence. It seems very premature to draw such a conclusion. If people start dying of cancer in high numbers a few years down the line, any early claims about the non-impact of this spill will age poorly. Regarding Katrina, we have the benefit of hindsight and enough time passing to have gotten a handle on the impact and it’s worth noting that those 1,400 deaths did not occur overnight. If you made an assessment of Katrina’s impact prematurely, such an assessment would be unlikely to capture the true impact of the event. A premature assessment wouldn’t have even considered including ~300-400 of the people who eventually died in health care facilities after the fact.

cma 4y ago
How much worse is burning this stuff than a vinyl siding apartment complex fire? Back of the envelope they burned about 2 orders of magnitude more material than in a large one of those, but were maybe in a 2 orders of magnitude less dense population area than those often take place in. Does the vinyl chloride precursor burn into much worse stuff than the polyvinyl version, for equal masses? I get that it might cross some threshold for acute effects for people right near by that the other fires may never cause even for direct neighbors.
shadowgovt 4y ago
It's not premature when after Katrina, by this point in time, the death toll was over 100. The East Palestine disaster is still clocking a zero (thankfully).
- haswell 4y ago
  The death toll at this time during Katrina tells us nothing about what to expect in this completely orthogonal scenario, unless you believe that the mortality associated with a category 5 hurricane plays out on the same timescale as exposure to these particular chemicals. It's simply not a useful analogy. I think it would also be unwise to draw unfounded conclusions about deaths-to-come as if they're some foregone conclusion, because we are in a stage of not knowing the full impact of what happened. At the same time, we also live in a world where we now understand the long term impacts of things like asbestos and a myriad of other chemicals/substances, and concern seems warranted.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    But this is neither the first spill of vinyl chloride nor the first train derailment releasing toxic chemicals. We actually have plenty of data on these kinds of disasters to have a fairly confident model of what to expect.
    - haswell 4y ago
      Has the equivalency of this spill to past spills been established? I haven’t found anything confirming that this spill is believed to match the characteristics of other spills in such a way that would alleviate concerns.