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Last week I was wondering whether the first chinese balloon story was really so interesting as to occupy the top 4 spots in /r/all and 5 of the top 11. Today, a week after the Ohio train chemical spill, the full severity is finally hitting the front page, albeit only one post at the 10th spot as of now, with the "why isn't this being talked about" group battling with the "it is being talked about, here's 10 news links" group in the comments. I saw the chemicals specifically being discussed a few times before today in doomer prep subs, but the front page was mostly UFOs or earthquake posts the last few days. Charitably, what the latter group don't understand is that what the former means, is, why did a tangible disaster story go less viral than a relatively inconsequential balloon, why wasn't it talked about the way we talk about other threats, why did it not develop the way we've come to expect big stories to develop? Uncharitably, the latter want to reinforce the conservative conspiracist trope. The white house certainly could have made a big statement about it, like they did with multiple statements about balloons and UFOs, but it's not false to say there was coverage of the train story, despite it being punctuated/less than the expected amount.
Every country will signal boost other stories to take the heat off embarrassing incidents, but what is unique is how skilled western media/culture is at dancing around plausible deniability. They covered it, but something clearly wasn't the same. It's like a rhetorical ABS, as in making controlled micro delays, to render judgment impossible, until enough time has passed that whatever the truth is, it's become a fait accompli. Like with the nordstream bombing, or old CIA shenanigans/warcrimes, the facts are suspended in the air until its old history, at which point you will have Americans saying how they're not surprised X or Y happened, but then turn around and continue to give themselves the benefit of the doubt or maintain faith in the system. Similar to gell-man amnesia but reflects worse for both the writer and the reader.
The Ohio train spill was kindof right on the edge between nothing burger, and massive disaster, and a key demonstration of the media and influencers rank incompetence to do even basic research.
Vinyl Chloride is nasty and carcinogenic as hell at any reasonably large concentration and its airborne. So whats the area where it'll be concentrated enough that you're fucked if you're exposed to it?
You actually have to do the math or atleast eyeball it to figure that out.
So 10 DOT 11 Tank Cars is 1,139,790 Liters of Vinyl Chloride or
1038 metric tons.Doing the math thats 1 ppm if evenly distributed over a cubic kilometer of atmosphere.
Ok what the hell does that mean? Well then you have to look up the OSHA safety data sheet for vinyl chloride and see that do to its carcenogenic effect the maximum safe exposure OSHA allows 1ppm over an 8 hour shift and 5ppm for only 15minutes maximum during emergency exposure.
So now suddenly you have the scale of the disaster. In the immediate locality of the crash 1-5 km they should be evacuating people since you could absolutely get larger concentrations than that, and living somewhere 24/7 is a more intense exposure than an 8hr shift.
But people 100kms away shouldn't be worried, and as it dilutes it really shouldn't be a concern unless you get areas of extreme concentration or it builds up in like the the regional water, or local fish people subsequently eat.
Then there's what they're doing to mitigate it. Burning mostly breaks it down into CO2 and Hydrogen Chloride, two "pollutants" that aren't carcinogenic and are both byproducts of the human body (Your stomach acid is hydrochloric acid (what hydrogen Chloride becomes on contact with water))... Sure you'll also get incomplete burn and some nasty byproducts, but on the whole this is vastly reducing the danger and long term toxicity, and even the low level acid rain the hydrogen chloride will become will be one mild day compared to what heavy industry produced for decades in the 20th century. Might hurt be rough on your garden for a week unless you're at the epicenter.
From all that you can conclude a lot and raise a lot of questions, people 100s of kilometers away are almost certainly fine, but was the evacuation as wide spread as it should have been? How accountable should we hold authorities if those near the crash develop nasty symptoms from not being evacuated?
Presumably someone at somepoint did these calculations... but they've utterly failed to communcate any of this and everyone is rightly primed to assume the company and the government is going to lie to their face and act with reckless indifference for their well being because.... well have you payed attention to anything ever?
So an authority or media figure has to actually show their work, and break down the above, Ie. Highschool math just basic unit conversion, a safety datasheet we'd expect any industrial worker to be comfortable with, enough highschool science to describe a combustion reaction... And not one of them is capable of or at all cares to do it.
Meanwhile hydrogen Chloride is the chemical that makes Volcanic clouds dark and ponderous, and hundreds of tons of it are visibly darkening the sky... So it looks like fucking Armageddon.... And not a single media figure of county official, or authority figure would ever be competent enough to say "Hey here's a photo of an volcanic eruption in Fiji, the village in this photo was fine... if you're asthmatic you should probably stay inside, but the chemical composition is largely comparable, its not a major concern as long as the immediate plume doesn't blow in your face".
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Like this all would be so basic for a competent to explain to give the scale of the disaster... but we live in a society where not a single competent human being works in government or media, and so I had to do the math and look it all up when my mother and half the internet was freaking out 600km away from the crash thinking this would take years off our lives, and all the media could do was scoff and call you a conspiracy theorist for not trusting the company and locality that would be liable.
Isn't the worry that the particles will come down which means it isn't a "cube" and concentration is far higher once it rains?
The vinyl chloride burned into hydrogen chloride or polymerised by now. The stuff polymerizes if stored improperly and stops being as nasty.
There was some other nasty stuff nearby, but as it is, the burnt vinyl chloride will just cause a modest amount of acid rain.
The problem is that vinyl chloride polymerization is exothermic. Which means if it starts to happen uncontrolled you'll get some polyvinyl chloride, and a bunch of toxic monomer violently expelled all over everything nearby.
Yeah, but shouldn't the monomer polymerise too ? I mean, it's shipped with stabilizers, and will start polymerising fast if stored improperly. Also, exothermic doesn't mean it's going to blow up , right, just that it gives off heat, no ? Problem would be if the VC stayed in environment, but can it ?
I looked at some discussion over at chemistry reddit, and people weren't that worried about the VC.
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Vinyl-chloride#section=Vapor-Density
Looking here (go down to 'stability'), it looks like it's going to polymerise if exposed to air. But it's not a liquid if it leaks, it turns into vapor, which is highly flammable.
So odds of any 'leak' getting into groundwater where it may largely avoid air are rather small, no ?
The monomer can only polymerize as a liquid. The heat of polymerization will increase the pressure in the (leaking) vessel and force more monomer (as a gas) out, or possibly cause the vessel to explode. This will release the monomer into the air. Some of it will get into groundwater; it's not very soluble but it doesn't take much to be a problem. The gas is heavier than air, so it will stick around for some time. It's not super-persistent; looks like a half-life in air of 1.5 days and it evaporates from surface water fairly quickly. So mostly the problem is acute, but groundwater contamination is possible also. Still better off burning the stuff -- no boom, less chance of groundwater contamination, and despite the smoke, less nasty air pollution.
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