The scale of this is vastly greater, yet the reaction is just unfathomable to me given the scale of this disaster.
Again, not trying to stir anything. Just an observation.
But "calling for the ban of all guns" is such a poor summary of the kinds of policy reactions that briefly find their way into discourse (and do not find traction) that any reader could be forgiven for assuming it doesn't matter whether you're trying to be unreasonable or just a natural.
Still, if we're going to look for similarities between that situation and this one... I think you'd find many people are quite willing to discuss the further regulation and liability in chemical transport, including whether what we have now is adequate, just like they might be willing to talk about whether firearm laws and regulations are adequate. The article certainly mentions lawsuits the railroad is facing, so that's already one avenue of accountability in play.
What's "unfathomable" about accountability via lawsuit and the Ohio health department doing water monitoring? Do you have specific insights into what they're not doing correctly, or is this more vague distrust?
60,000 premature deaths were estimated to have been caused by air pollution in 2019, mostly from sources that were operating within regulations.
Was this bad? Yes. Is this a huge disaster in any way comparable to the ones we inflict on ourselves without a thought? Not on the evidence I’ve seen thus far.
The probable human deaths from this spill is a number somewhere between zero and 10 over decades.
That's a massive difference from a mass-casualty shooting.
Those most at risk are the first responders; everyone who heeded the evacuation order should be pretty much fine.
https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2023/02/17/was-vinyl-chloride-use...
Phosgene breaks down in the environment on timescales measured from hours to days. The five-day evac window was more than enough to remove all appreciable amounts of phosgene from the environment. And given how reactive it is, you can trust the lack of anyone showing up in a hospital in east Ohio looking like they climbed out of an eastern-front trench as indicative that the phosgene has not caused harm.
It's real easy to over-estimate the damage this spill will do. In practice, people have been using (and spilling) vinyl chloride for over 180 years; we have a pretty good sense of the damage it can do. Not a good situation, but far on the low end of environmental impact risks (somewhere north of "a car full of diapers" and far, far south of "a car full of perchloroethylene").
There's already massive safety measures. If they weren't followed then that needs to be addressed.
This is quite the stretch.
When was the last time you heard, on the news, that Jackson Mississippi still doesn’t have clean water?
Because they still don’t have clean water, haven’t for months, and are also a demographic where it could be spun as “racial injustice”
If you want to compare Jackson, MS..it’s 82% black (which is why you brought it up) in which its own state calls it the murder capital of the world. It appears they have a lot of city related issues including misappropriation of funds.