Medical response to a vinyl chloride release from a train derailment (2017)
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Do these people not even care about their own well-being? I was stuck in traffic downwind of a semi fire once and it was like breathing death, I've carried an emergency CBRN respirator under my seat ever since. These responders have CBRN in their job title!
Mixed material fires always smell horrible, and I haven't experienced vinyl chloride, but it sounds like it has a typical sweetish chlorocarbon smell, which probably won't trigger a "this might be toxic" reaction for many people. I'm more surprised that they didn't get overcome by the fumes, given that any remaining liquid would be boiling. Maybe they just held their breath...
I would expect the average resident to think that, but not a trained hazmat responder. That's like if I opened the TaylorSwift.mp3.exe in my spam folder and ran it as admin. I should know better.
And these people were shockingly oblivious to the health impacts of their immediate environment.
I cleared out old papers from an empty cubicle next to mine because it was exacerbating my respiratory issues. The person whose cubicle was on the other side of that cubicle had been to see a doctor three times for some infection. After I removed the papers, their infection finally cleared up. They seemed to see zero connection between the two things.
On another occasion, work crews came in to do work in an underutilized section covered in dust. My team was right next to all this and one of my coworkers was coughing all day, obviously in reaction.
I said something sympathetic and she said "Oh, I guess that could be why I'm coughing. It hadn't occurred to me they might be related."
If she realized the papers were making her sick, there's absolutely no reason she couldn't have decided to clean out that cubicle herself and she could have been more obvious about it than I was due to her supervisory position. She was responsible for the team. She could have taken responsibility for the "waste" of papers being left to rot in that empty cubicle.
I did it more surreptitiously because I had no such authority. I spent a week or more getting forms and envelopes out of that cubicle whenever I needed forms and envelopes and quietly throwing out the ones so covered in dust and bent out of shape that they were no longer usable.
Perhaps the other person simply didn't want to complain but my immediate boss went three times for antibiotics and then the last round finally worked "coincidentally" after I cleaned out the cubicle between hers and mine. If she knew the papers were why she was not getting better and just didn't want to complain, then she was too big of a doormat to deserve any kind of supervisory position at all.
I doubt that's the explanation.
I think if they weren't most of them would switch careers immediately.
My first thought was that the odor would obviously signal danger and deter approach, but apparently it has "a pleasant odor at high concentrations."
1. All sides of the US political system represent corporate interests. Contemporaneously, Biden's DoJ filed an amicus brief in support of Norfolk Southern's case currently before the Supreme Court to limit lawsuits [1], the kind that will inevitably result from this kind of chemical release. And yes, the same Norfolk Southern;
2. Media isn't so much politically biased as it is a tool of and for corporate interests. The East Palestine case had a virtual media blackout for the first 1-2 weeks. Concurrently there was wall-to-wall media coverage about a Chinese balloon, a complete non-story. Think about that and why; and
3. As much as many will make (often legitimate) complaints about social media, independent reporting on East Palestine on social media absolutely forced the administration's hand into having to respond. Black clouds from burning vinyl chloride visible from planes flying by (and probably from space), dead fish in rivers, etc were getting wide distribution on Tiktok, Twitter and elsewhere.
There is failure here at every level. There is no single bad actor. A partial list:
- Allowing railroads to skirt safety to chase higher profits aka Precision Scheduled Railroading ("PSR");
- Failure of safety systems to detect and prevent such a crash;
- Failure to identify and disclose what had been and potentially could be spilled. Vinyl Chloride was known about quickly but there are other like contaminants that didn't come to light until later;
- The Ohio governor playing politics and not calling for Federal help;
- There are some large question marks with what Norfolk Southern did with that extra time. Who knows what evidence "disappeared"?
- The carriage carrying vinyl chloride itself was only preserved after a social media backed public outcry really forced the administration into action and the NTSB got involved;
- The administration's response was terrible. Biden could've absolutely forced Ohio's hand here by just talking about or even visiting the site;
- McKinsey alum and likely future presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg as Transportation Secretary failed to respond in any way, probably not wanting to upset future donors;
- Testing at the site and the surrounding areas has largely been inadequate, mainly in what they're testing for or, more specifically, what they aren't testing for. There are contamination experts who have independently talked about this;
- Policy around what constitutes a hazardous train and the requiring brakes upgrades were rules initially proposed in the Obama administration, watered down after lobbying, repealed under Trump and not resinstituted under Biden;
- No one will go to jail for this and that's really what needs to happen. Fines are just the cost of doing business;
- You may find that liability for cleanup and compensation ends up being limited in some way. Fun fact (and example): Congress passed a law to limit liability for nuclear plant operators in the case of a disaster [2];
- Biden and Congress both sided with rail companies recently and used their power to end a rail worker's strike that was partly motivated by safety concerns.
This is a systemic problem. It is not a Democrat vs Republican issue. Both sides are united behind corporate interests. Deregulation is nothing more than increasing profits by shifting costs to the public. The government is complicit in this.
I don't know how many times we'll need to pollute the environment and poison people before we start cottoning on to this.
[1]: https://www.levernews.com/bidens-doj-backing-norfolk-souther...
[2]: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10821#:~:te....
If you let a company grow too large it's essentially impossible for the government to effectively regulate.
If you let a company grow too large it's essentially impossible for profit news companies to effectively cover it.
If you let a company grow too large it will eventually act in a manner so ridiculously irresponsible that you can literally observe the consequences from outer space.
This is a failure with seemingly a very simple root cause.
It may be harder to be corrupt when there is more competition in a market because each participant is less able to afford paying for your integrity.
The implication there is that the train people can do whatever they want, because their industry is so important.
Tell that to China [1]. Not to get sidetracked, this isn't a statement about the merits of what China did here, just the fact that they could do it and did it.
You are alluding to corporate consolidationg being a problem, which it is, but that's only one facet. For example, the "money = speech" regime we've been in since Citizens United v. FEC is another big one. Another big one is Reagan era propaganda that many continue to treat as fact despite decades of evidence to the contrary (eg trickle down economics, deregulattion).
The solution for the rail freight industry in particular is to nationalize the whole thing, which of course will never happen.
> Policy around what constitutes a hazardous train and the requiring brakes upgrades were rules initially proposed in the Obama administration, watered down after lobbying, repealed under Trump and not resinstituted under Biden;
Is irrelevant to this situation, better breaks would not have fixed this situation as the actual cause of the derailment was a failed axel. The breaks thing is a partisan talking point meant to deflect blame from the current administration.
https://www.statnews.com/2023/02/21/east-palestine-train-che...
> The current, age-old technology of hydraulic brakes meant that in the Norfolk Southern train’s case, when one car derailed, the entire train contracted and expanded like an accordion, sending many more cars off the rails.
I'm not positive it's accurate though, as the other articles I've read which mention cars accordioning mention that this is due to car placement (lighter loads between the engine and the heavier tanker loads). https://www.wfmj.com/story/48419813/lawsuit-alleges-poor-rai...
Example: the China balloon. This really serves the interests of the military-industrial complex (ie the "balloon gap" [1]) while playing into xenophobia.
As for East Palestine, you cannot overstate how much Tiktok altered the media narrative [2]. Train derailments actually happen all the time [3]. Norfolk Southern treated this as business as usual, including offering an insulting $25,000 to a town of 5,000 [4].
Mainstream media essentially had their hand forced by social media and circumstance into covering something they otherwise were ignoring.
[1]: https://www.barrons.com/articles/china-spy-balloon-defense-s...
[2]: https://www.wired.com/story/east-palestine-ohio-train-derail...
[3]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/often-trains-derail-more-thin...
[4]: https://www.yahoo.com/now/norfolk-southern-giving-25-000-200...
Mind you there is still the ongoing predicament with the 3 other unidentified objects that were presumably shot down that the military is strangely quiet on.
FYI the reason many are interested is because of the UAP/UFO connection. If what we've actually tried to shoot down were ET craft, that would be kinda headline grabbing wouldn't you think?
Train derailment happen all the time and for precisely this reason it may not garner as much genuine interest, irrespective how genuinely terrible a tragedy it was.
A train carrying a compound specifically recommended not to be transported by rail because of the hazard it poses as an environmental contaminant, the malfeasance and corruption that led to it being delisted and being on that train, and the subsequent political and legal maneuvering so as to minimize liability while mobilizing media to misdirect and trivialize the risk and endangerment to a town of people is the story.
This is why the US Government keeps freaking out about TikTok. They don’t know who gets to pull the strings with the algorithm. Is it pro environmental, antigovernment, anticoporate? They don’t have to censor, just figure out what slant do they want to promote ever so gently. And right now the US government is freaking out because they don’t know when or why the Chinese government exercises its control
We'll see eventually, hopefully.
There are "failures" at so many levels that if these were indeed "mistakes", you would expect at least some people in the system to speak up. It's mind-boggling that despite the tragedy nobody within the system finds the moral courage to speak up. Except maybe the railwork workers that the current WH is trying to curtail.
More info on this part?
[1] - https://www.wtae.com/article/us-epa-considers-future-tests-f...
> "I'd have to consult my team," said EPA Administrator Michael Regan on Feb. 21, when asked at a news conference whether authorities had tested for dioxins in East Palestine. "I'm not quite sure if we're testing for dioxins yet. I know that it's under discussion."
...
> “The incomplete combustion byproducts of those chemicals – we have no idea what they are,” he said. “And they can potentially be highly toxic or carcinogenic.”
> Gao pointed out that when chemicals such as vinyl chloride burn in the open, it’s not possible to ensure a “complete” chemical reaction. It is therefore impossible to know for sure which byproducts are created without experimentation.
[2] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10705663/
> Dioxin values measured in soils and plants were in the natural range of 20 ng I-TE/kg DS. These values increased to 8300 ng at the very seat of the fire only. With the water used for fire fighting vinyl chloride penetrated into the groundwater revealing values of up to 73 mg/litre.