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In the Netherlands there is an ongoing debate on the use of ballast stones giving off quartz dust that can cause lung disease and cancer. https://www.dutchnews

• bluescrn 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • noduerme 3y ago
    It's true, and it's odd, because the impulse clearly comes mostly from a desire to level economic inequalities - yet it comes from people who can afford to bike to work, or work from home. In that way it resembles a colonial attitude toward one's own society, at precisely the time when clean, carbon-neutral, fast and efficient personal transportation has come within reach for people below the social status of the proponents of ecological purity. The fact that they don't welcome its availability but instead reach for the next lever by which to reduce living standards and mobility (in the name of "justice") speaks to the classism and privilege underlying their crusade for purity.
    • kruxigt 3y ago
      [dead]
    • muti 3y ago
      Car dependency is an enormous burden on the least well off
      • noduerme 3y ago
        Yes, that's true! Which is a way of affirming my original point, that biking to work is for the most privileged.
      • bluescrn 3y ago
        Imagine what would happen if the cars all disappeared, and suburban living was no longer viable. To eliminate the car, we'd need to move all of humanity into tiny apartments in super-dense cities, something that isn't practical nor desirable given the current design of cities and the current state of society. (There's also the issue of 'where does food come from?', and the fact we can't fully automate farming yet, so still need people to live and work where the food is produce, in places where cars are essential)
        • JoeAltmaier 3y ago
          That bit about farming is perhaps less relevant. Fewer than 2% of us farm. That part of the car equation is small. Oh, and we could live in villages. Like we did before cities grew into such megaliths. That might work too.
          • bluescrn 3y ago
            We can't go back to villages and working the fields by hand or with horses for the same reason we can't go back to living in caves and hunting/gathering. There's simply too many people now.
            • JoeAltmaier 3y ago
              That's further than I meant to suggest. There's plenty of land, plenty of places for people that aren't mega-cities. Those of us out here know that. And my commute? Down the hall to my computer. Put small towns on train lines, the car issue is lessened. Make the shopping districts walkable, again lessened. I do use a car out here - to get to a city center where I walk from then on. A train or bus would have worked too.
              • SoftTalker 3y ago
                > I do use a car out here - to get to a city center where I walk from then on. Is that appreciably different from driving to a mall and then walking through it to do your shopping? A quaint downtown square with a hardware store, a grocer, a butcher, and a barber shop is nostalgic but doesn't serve large populations as well.
    • californical 3y ago
      > people who can afford to bike to work A bike costs less than a single monthly car payment, and has approximately zero recurring costs. And the infrastructure is cheaper to maintain than car infrastructure, by a lot, reducing the tax burden on cities and towns. If a household was able to switch from two cars to one because biking was a reasonable option, they’d save hundreds of dollars a month from insurance, maintenance, and the car payment/depreciation. I support biking as an alternative largely because I’m cheap, the environmental benefit is just a bonus. (And the health benefits, and that it’s just easier to bike 3mi than to drive that distance and have to search for parking)
      • noduerme 3y ago
        >> just easier to bike 3mi Where I grew up in Los Angeles, only the very wealthy lived within 10 miles of where they worked.
        • moooo99 3y ago
          > Where I grew up in Los Angeles, only the very wealthy lived within 10 miles of where they worked. Thats not a mode of transporation issue, that is a city planning issue
          • DonHopkins 3y ago
            See "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtaHNAaDhjU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtaHNAaDhjU
      • bluescrn 3y ago
        Bikes are cheap. Living within cycling distance of your workplace can be incredibly expensive.
        • californical 3y ago
          Exactly! Which is why I try to propose fixing zoning issues and allowing people to live closer to their workplaces, along with the infrastructure changes to go along with it. And: public transit as a viable alternative. I live ~10 miles from work, but it’s just a short trip from home (by bike or tram) to the train station, which drops me within 0.2 miles of the office. And the trains run every 10-15 mins all day. I could also walk 15 mins from home for a bus that goes to the block of my office, and has service every 10 minutes until ~midnight, but I’m lazy and prefer the train. (US citizen living in Europe)
  • toxik 3y ago
    Brake and tire dust absolutely are a problem, even if it’s inconvenient for you. Reducing fine particulate matter pollution is a major concern. That it translates onto railway is fairly unsurprising. By the way, EVs reduce brake dust since they are basically braking magnetically a lot of the time.
    • bluescrn 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • muti 3y ago
        Cycling and walking are active and would have a net benefit if more people switched away from sedentary driving. Bike brakes and shoe soles don't have to slow down thousands of kilograms of mass either, so the wear and subsequent particulate emissions are much less than a car.
        • nemo44x 3y ago
          Driving provides far more utility than just moving a person. It moves to-and-fro many people over relatively large distances with many other objects, all on demand and on the whim of the driver. Walking or riding a bike is nice. But they are not suitable replacements for the multitude of utility a car provides.
          • eliaspro 3y ago
            When there's proper public transport in place, cars aren't needed. Trains for medium/long distances, busses for medium/short distances, bikes for short distances and a pair of feet for everything else. Beyond a certain network-density of other modes of transport, there are simply better alternatives to cars (in most cases). Cars by themselves are the most inefficient (cost, space, fuel, economically) and polluting mode of land-based transport we have. I know, it's a completely different thing in the US, which is full of car centric infrastructure and other modes of transport are either absent (passenger trains) or often impossible or outright dangerous due to the sheer danger caused by a lack of proper infrastructure for pedestrians/cyclists, public education/general behavior (road rage, drivers' education, ...) or even impossible to cover by bike due to the distances caused by urban sprawl/a lack of density due to zoning laws.
  • amelius 3y ago
    It's only a hazard for the workers, not the passengers if I read the article correctly. Perhaps someone can explain why that is the case.
    • stephen_g 3y ago
      The key bit is this - “Work on the ballast can result in quartz dust being released from the stones, which can cause lung cancer.” (Emphasis mine) Since the tracks are closed while ballast is being put down, tamped, etc. passengers don’t tend to be in close contact. By the time the trains are running again, much of the light, dangerous dust will have blown away and/or settled, hence the risk is mostly to track workers during certain types of work. It would pose some risk to people in nearby properties, but since the dust would be dispersed into the air it would probably drop off something like exponentially with distance. It’s the same with all sorts of things, such as drilling through bricks, concrete cutting, etc. - in my experience tradesmen still take far to little precaution (often none) even though we now know the risks of silica dust.
    • nemo44x 3y ago
      For many things it’s about the constant exposure for years and years. Walking past workers doing this isn’t harmful whereas immersing in it day in and day out for years is harmful. X-rays are a good example. They would be harmful to an operator that doesn’t take precaution but they are harmless to patients who only have limited exposure their entire life. We see this with many things but activist/special interest groups often distort the risks to persuade people to support their cause. Roundup comes to mind.
    • 11235813213455 3y ago
      or people living nearby?
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • dan-robertson 3y ago
    Trains also have breaks that produce break dust.
• MeteorMarc 3y ago
  This concerns quartz dust that comes with the stones from the groove, as well as new dust from putting the stones into place.
• moffkalast 3y ago
  Well literally everything causes cancer to some degree and any particles one breathes in that aren't air can cause lung problems. The real question is probably "do enough people get sick from it that it's more expensive for the rail company to pay out lawsuits than the track to be replaced".
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• rob74 3y ago
  Maybe you should mention that these concerns are about the workers who "work with the stones on a daily basis, often standing in great clouds of dust without wearing masks" (maybe they should simply wear masks then?), not the general public.
  • andix 3y ago
    Whenever there is a lot of dust, you should wear a mask. One good thing the pandemic taught us: how to use masks. And now the n95/ffp2 are cheap again.
    • newaccount74 3y ago
      I never figured out how to get an FFP2 mask to be tight. Air always passed on the sides somewhere. The only mask that I've tried that is actually air-tight is a 3M silicone mask with replaceable filters. It works even with a short beard. I think only proper masks like that actually prevent the bad stuff from getting into your lungs (assuming you buy the correct filters).
      • andix 3y ago
        That’s tricky for some people, especially for skinny people in combination with big cheekbones. Did you try the 3M masks too, in tests they seem to perform in average much better than the Asian style masks just out of two pieces laminated together. They seem to work best on round faces, which are very common in Asia.
    • rcme 3y ago
      A half-face P100 respirator is a much better choice for any serious dust. Also, surprisingly, P100 respirators are effortless to breathe in while offering superior protection.
      • hackernewds 3y ago
        ..while simultaneously 100x your chances of being mistook for a Subzero or Scorpion cosplay. YMMV on whether that is preferred
• devjab 3y ago
  Is this from the stones, or because the stones are polluted? There has been a lot of talk about where to put the old stones here in Denmark (another densely populated region), because if you “put” it too close to sources of drinking water all that pollution they’ve soaked up over the years will eventually get into the ground water. If it’s that dust, and not “just” quarts dust from the stones themselves, then I wonder if switching will help. I mean, the trains are still going to drop whatever it is they drop as they ride along.
  • mauvehaus 3y ago
    It's from the rock dust itself. Quartz is silica, and silica dust causes silicosis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicosis
  • londons_explore 3y ago
    I wonder why railway ballast is polluted...? Has someone been running trains for years which leak loads of oil or something?
    • skeeter2020 3y ago
      it's not; it's the dust from the actual stones themselves not a contamination.
    • devjab 3y ago
      In Denmark it’s because we still have diesel trains from the 80-90ies because their replacements didn’t work. (Don’t ask). I’m not sure the electrics they plan on implementing will have the same issue.
      • Symbiote 3y ago
        Other than suburban and light rail lines, it's only the lines from Germany to Sweden that are electrified: https://openrailwaymap.org/?style=electrified&lat=56.28605924471002&lon=10.5963134765625&zoom=7 https://openrailwaymap.org/?style=electrified&lat=56.2860592...
• londons_explore 3y ago
  Living in europe where ~once a year storms bring massive amounts of super fine quartz sand from the sahara desert, you'd imagine the amount from railway ballast wouldn't be a concern...
• MagicMoonlight 3y ago
  People campaign about these weird issues and then ignore the plastic in the drinking water and the hormones in the food…