Ohio vinyl chloride accident summary

I don't think we necessarily need a more reliable source to point out that this one is wildly unreliable

I used to run a manufacturing plant that made millions of pounds of the precursor to vinyl chloride every day (EDC, ethylene di-chloride). The EDC was sent in a 3 mile long pipe to another unit which was run by my very best friends that I drank with/barbecued/watched game of thrones/went fishing on the coast with every weekend, and their unit produced the vinyl chloride (VCM, Vinyl Chloride Monomer). I was often inside that unit's control room diagnosing a variety of manufacturing problems.

This is a very, very serious disaster and the panic is well-warranted. These chemicals are awful and can produce even worse chemicals after combusting -- much less of those worse chemicals, but some of them, like small quantities of PCB's, will stick around in the soil forever and potentially make this whole place un-inhabitable. I say "small" quantities of PCB's but if you're combusting a million pounds of Vinyl Chloride Monomer, you will generate a very significant and scary amount of PCB's that don't really ever degrade.

I can't imagine how much PCB might be generated by burning as much VCM as they burned in Ohio. I also can't figure out a better way to clean it up. The rail company should absolutely pay for all the effects of this.

When like a process pump caught on fire (from friction, etc) it would spew PCB's around the concrete pad. Our only viable solution to clean up the PCB's was to spray it with EDC to dissolve it -- PCB's are too sticky and inert to clean up manually. EDC is also a toxic chemical but nothing else worked well to clean up the PCB's. It's illegal to spill too much EDC but we kept it under the "reportable quantity" by only spraying less than a gallon per incident so we didn't have to file an EPA or OSHA report about EDC pollution.

My very last day of work I watched a vinyl chloride railcar explode as I was carrying out my last box of stuff at 8PM. From 2 miles away the explosion hit me in the chest like I was 20 feet from a naval gun. I never wanted to work in a chemical plant again after that.

Pretty much all of the guys that were in the plants for more than 5-10 years have endocrine/HPTA issues.

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I also used to work at an acrylates manufacturing unit in a different state. Personally as a nearby resident I'd be more immediately worried about the combustion of all the leaked Butyl Acrylate producing Acrolein than I would be about the potential PCB's.

Acrylates are by far my least favorite bulk chemical. I fucking hate acrylates. Trace amounts of them in the air have a massively terrible affect on my respirator health.