East Palestine, Ohio Train Derailment; Feb 3, 2023; Vinyl Chloride; ongoing aftermath

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Wondering why this human, environmental, industrial disaster is not getting more coverage.

https://twitter.com/realstewpeters/status/1624885466469175298

So here’s a bucket to put this stuff into.

If you are in Ohio, or in the toxic plume’s path or fallout shadow, stay safe and we want to hear from you.

Thanks in advance.

ETA:

https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/1624801150028632065

ETA 2:

“We basically nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open,” said Sil Caggiano, a hazardous materials specialist.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sent a letter to Norfolk Southern stating that ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate and isobutylene were also in the rail cars that were derailed, breached and/or on fire.

Caggiano says ethylhexyl acrylate is especially worrisome. He says it’s a carcinogen and contact with it can cause burning and irritation in the skin and eyes. Breathing it in can irritate the nose and throat and cause coughing and shortness of breath.

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I called a handfull of my friends and family yesterday to ask if they knew what was happening in East Palenstine, Ohio and virtually all of them had no clue. I first heard about it on reddit and not on any of the news sources I follow. But hey look, there’s another balloon!

the red balloon GIF by Maudit

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Weirder and weirder.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/health/ohio-train-derailment-white-noise/index.html

The 2022 movie was shot around Ohio and is based on a novel by Don DeLillo. The book was published in 1985, shortly after a chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, that killed nearly 4,000 people. The book and film follow the fictional Gladney family – a couple and their four kids – as they flee an “airborne toxic event” and then return home and try to resume their normal lives.

Ratner tried to rewatch the movie a few days ago and found that he couldn’t finish it.

“All of a sudden, it hit too close to home,” he said.

Ratner and his family – his wife, Lindsay, and their kids, Lilly, Izzy, Simon and Brodie – are living the fiction they helped bring to the screen. …

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Thanks!
Will try to do a strikethrough up top.

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https://archive.is/nJTpO

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is working on an assessment for a remediation plan.

“Initially, with most environmental spills, it is difficult to determine the exact amount of material that has been released into the air, water, and soil,” James Lee, media relations manager for the Ohio EPA, wrote in an email to CNN. “The assessment phase that will occur after the emergency is over will help to determine that information.”

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There’s been some advice on Reddit that evacuees and victims not take any money from Norfolk Southern, not even money meant to cover emergency accommodations, in case the recipient has to sign for that compensation, and in the fine print of that contract could lurk legal legal absolving NS from all responsibility.

The thermal inversion [weather] had kept the toxic plume hovering for a bit before drifting south and east of the “controlled release” by intentional detonation.

Local paper says:

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Speaking as a chemical engineer, vinyl chloride monomer is on my “oh shit” list.

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Check tweets before you like them.

And post screenshots to Tweets instead of links. Only takes a couple more seconds, right? And hopefuly helps hasten the decline of Twuttter, I mean, Fascism Central.

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Understood.

Annoyingly, like the old saw that broken clock is right twice a day, even such people as Stew Peters can every so often report on something actually happening.

I will avoid posting Twitter links and if I have the time and I still think it’s relevant, will try to take the time to post a screenshot instead. It does break the useful downthread links that have merit.

One challenge is that there are people (authors and “medical Twitter” who I follow) who post only from Twitter. These are people who hate Elno as much as I do but they have spent decades on Twitter building their brand, having a [scrollable] history, etc.

I get it.
Sorry guys.
I will do better.

Btw, the dead fish thing is confirmed. Reliable news outlets are showing footage of fish kills now in creeks that connect with the Ohio River, a source of drinking water for ~25 million people (ok ok and animals and plants etc.).

Sad and angered that one of the biggest ecological disasters in the U.S. is not getting handled with all due respect and scrutiny. Not by county/state/federal agencies, not by the media, not by regulatory bodies long-compromised by corporate money and regulatory capture, etc. The people of East Palestine, and surrounding areas, are getting screwed, and will continue to be screwed, for a very long time–generations to come. If anyone has any doubts about how screwed, review the history of the Bhopal disaster that Dow Chemical has yet to come clean on.

In both cases: catastrophically bad, entirely preventable, but for… Profit over People.

I say this unironically: at least Erin Brockovich has leaned in on the unfolding horrors in East Palestine, Ohio. And no, I will not post a link to her Twitter feed. I hear you can find her there though.

ETA:
grammar

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Thanks for all of that, rage-inducing indeed.

Re links, I’m no final arbiter, of course. It’s just like, my opinion, man.

the big lebowski GIF

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Agreed. Here’s Beau’s latest on the situation, as well as a report about the chemicals that were somehow missed in the original reports:

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Thanks for posting this.

In the past few days:

(sorry it points to a FOX station, I am having a hard time getting a better link to it for the meantime)

It was a collision. Hazmat came out to clean up the diesel. The people of Houston and Splendora are dang lucky.

ETA: typo

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Amy Goodman and D Now are on it.

we’re joined by three guests. Ross Grooters is with us, a locomotive engineer, co-chair of Railroad Workers United. Julia Rock joins us, an investigative reporter with The Lever who has been following the derailment in Ohio, her pieces headlined “There Will Be More Derailments” and “Rail Companies Blocked Safety Rules Before Ohio Derailment.” But we begin with Emily Wright, a resident of Columbiana County in Ohio, a few miles from the derailment and explosion site in East Palestine. She’s also the development director for River Valley Organizing, which is working with residents to call for justice-centered healing.

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Rail Baron stooge to residents: “It was them lefty white replacers!”

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): If you are looking for actual systemic racism, well, this is a perfect example of it in society. If you’re looking at it from all over the top systemic racism, here’s a almost entirely white community that is poor and that is impoverished and that is being systemically oppressed by the government through ecological disaster that will lead to their deaths, undoubtedly, based on what we saw yesterday.

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Yes.

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The Chapo guys weigh in:

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Sheesh. The right has really turned up the heat on the directive that “Any way, anyhow you can, push [the myth of] white victimhood.”

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