Airborne Toxic Event

February 9, 2023 2:39 PM

Last Friday a 50-car train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. It was carrying vinyl chloride, and burst into flames after the wreck. On Monday the emergency crews released toxic chemicals into the air and set them on fire, to ensure the containers didn't explode. On Wednesday the evacuation order was reversed and the air declared safe. At a news conference Wednesday, things got weird.
posted by chavenet (64 comments total)

this makes me want a Dylar
posted by entropone at 2:43 PM on February 9, 2023 [14 favorites]

A broadcast reporter was pushed to the ground, handcuffed and arrested for trespassing Wednesday while covering a news conference about the derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals in Ohio.

Some of the...um...unhindered by reality...subreddits have already been flying the “government conspiracy” flags over the derailment and the (in their eyes) complete lack of any coverage about “what’s really happening on the ground” by the media. This little event isn’t gonna settle them down any.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:47 PM on February 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

that would be the lack of coverage about what was really happening in the area with the cloud of toxic fumes that will probably kill you?

<fiction>
I hear the intrepid reporter who violated the evacuation order and went in to investigate never came back
</fiction>
posted by allegedly at 2:54 PM on February 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

Here’s a non-NYT link on the incident.
posted by eviemath at 3:00 PM on February 9, 2023 [8 favorites]

I've no idea if this criticism carries weight but..

Before its derailment, Norfolk Southern helped kill a rule to require better braking systems.

Lobbyists also convinced regulators to ignore the NTSB & exempt such trains from being strictly regulated as “high-hazard flammable trains.”
posted by jeffburdges at 3:03 PM on February 9, 2023 [22 favorites]

As a rabid toponymyst, I find the name East Palestine fascinating. Originally founded as Mechanicsburg in 1828, it incorporated as East Palestine in 1875 in a wave of local religious naming. But why "East?" There isn't a local West or even just plain Palestine. It's only East of the original Palestine if you go the long way around.

Interesting Midwest tie-in, as a teen in Southern Illinois we aspersed more rural towns as "East Jesus." As in, "That guy listens to country, is he from out in East Jesus?"

That my home town considered other towns "more" rural is deeply ironic.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 3:04 PM on February 9, 2023 [50 favorites]

"About four years later, while railway interests donating “more than $6 million to GOP campaigns,” there was an enormous public safety disaster in the White House named Donald Trump."
posted by clavdivs at 3:08 PM on February 9, 2023 [9 favorites]

That my home town considered other towns "more" rural is deeply ironic.

In Michigan, we can it Kalamazoo.

FRM: OSA. '22-3.18 stats.
posted by clavdivs at 3:23 PM on February 9, 2023 [5 favorites]

DeWine could follow up on his words, to use the power of his office to investigate what happened and hold those LEO accountable for their actions, who are responsible. He has that power.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:23 PM on February 9, 2023 [24 favorites]

clavdivs - Having come of age in a Michigan town much smaller than Kalamazoo, I find that deeply weird. Kalamazoo was like big city
posted by caution live frogs at 3:44 PM on February 9, 2023 [12 favorites]

Good on the railway companies for continuing to run trains in increasingly unsafe conditions while getting record profits, and good on Mr Joseph “most pro-labor president” Biden and Congress on making sure there was no strike to give workers some paid sick days and better scheduling, and stopping the companies from trying to run single operator trains :)

I’m sure there was no relation (structurally speaking) between any of that and what happened here and what’s gonna continue happening :)
posted by bxvr at 3:45 PM on February 9, 2023 [75 favorites]

Anyway nationalize the trains you cowards
posted by bxvr at 3:46 PM on February 9, 2023 [92 favorites]

As someone who lives 450 feet from a freight train line and despises authoritarianism, all of this is bad.
posted by mollweide at 3:59 PM on February 9, 2023 [9 favorites]

Cops are angry as hell right now, and they think they can do whatever they want in red states and red cities.

And they’re usually right.
posted by jamjam at 4:15 PM on February 9, 2023 [24 favorites]

Kalamazoo was like big city
That in-itself is weird. I said "can it" (can being prepackaged comment) not a typo or autocorrect error as people outside of Michigan don't know that.
posted by clavdivs at 4:24 PM on February 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

Anyway nationalize the trains you cowards
posted by clavdivs at 4:33 PM on February 9, 2023 [9 favorites]

I lived through this when I was a kid in 1979. It was the Mississauga Train Derailment and 250K people were evacuated as a chorine gas cloud floated around the center of my city.

I have weird memories of the evacuation - traffic jammed sub-development streets, cops with gasmasks and shotguns on corners, police cars driving around announcing the evacuation and saying looters will be shot using megaphones, several days living & sleeping on sleeping bags piled in a false-wall pseudo-corner of a convention center with hundreds of other evacuees, eating free big macs and "I survived the Great Mississauga Train Derailment" t-shirts.

Disaster nostalgia is a weird thing to have but I kind of do.
posted by srboisvert at 4:33 PM on February 9, 2023 [48 favorites]

Having come of age in a Michigan town much smaller than Kalamazoo

Ypsi?
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 4:34 PM on February 9, 2023 [5 favorites]

As a rabid toponymyst, I find the name East Palestine fascinating. Originally founded as Mechanicsburg in 1828, it incorporated as East Palestine in 1875 in a wave of local religious naming. But why "East?" There isn't a local West or even just plain Palestine

Palestine, Ohio is east of Greenville, near the Indiana border in Darke County. It was founded in 1840 (at least according to the sign outside of the village, Wikipedia says earlier).
posted by minervous at 4:50 PM on February 9, 2023 [7 favorites]

Apparently, disrespecting the gov is an arrestable crime in that state, eh?
posted by kschang at 6:34 PM on February 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

“government conspiracy”

I suppose that's one way to describe what the Federalist Society and etc. have accomplished by stacking the judiciary, in emboldening police and hollowing out civil rights claims against them.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:16 PM on February 9, 2023 [17 favorites]

Apparently, disrespecting the gov is an arrestable crime in that state, eh?

The Governor was a convenient excuse. A small-town cop deciding that you are arrestable is an arrestable offence.

Twas ever thus.
posted by delfin at 7:27 PM on February 9, 2023 [20 favorites]

Fox News: East Palestine police defend arrest of NewsNation correspondent covering Ohio train derailment presser

According to the police, their story goes like this:
* The Chief of Police claimed that the reporter's live report from the rear of the gymnasium was "loud," prompting two State Highway Patrol Troopers along with Adjutant Major General Harris from the National Guard to "advise" the NewsNation crew to "stop their live reporting in an effort to ensure that all members of the media were getting the necessary safety information."

* The reporter, naturally, contested this arbitrary proclamation.

* The Guardsman decided that the reporter was "approaching him in a an aggressive manner" and he "felt threatened," so he initiated physical contact, pushing him away.

(insert Uncle Jimbo shouting HE'S COMIN' RIGHT FOR US! and blasting away here)

* Post-shove, the troopers declared to the reporter, "Welp, that's it, now it's a physical confrontation, you have to leave the building immediately."

* Reporter said "I'm not leaving, I'm in the middle of a news broadcast."

* Troopers continued pressuring him to leave, then announced that he was being arrested for criminal trespass, then declared that he was resisting arrest, then hauled him off to the county jail.

There are many who claim that ACAB is more of a general guideline than an ironclad rule. I do wish that I believed that.
posted by delfin at 7:46 PM on February 9, 2023 [38 favorites]

That my home town considered other towns "more" rural is deeply ironic.

I can attest that no matter how far out in the boonies you are, there's always someplace down the road that's even further out in the boonies that you can point to and say, "Those people *really* live out in the boonies."

The people at the end of the highway can point to the people at the end of the dirt road, and the people at the end of the dirt road can point to the fly-in community, and people in the fly-in community know a guy who lives out on the trapline all year.

I assume the guy on the trapline knows he's in the boonies, but maybe he'd point you to a polar explorer...
posted by clawsoon at 7:50 PM on February 9, 2023 [20 favorites]

DeWine could follow up on his words, to use the power of his office to investigate what happened and hold those LEO accountable for their actions, who are responsible. He has that power.

Well, he could.... He does have the power....
But will he?
posted by BlueHorse at 8:20 PM on February 9, 2023 [5 favorites]

You'd probably have to get him some strong coffee, and de-wine him first.
posted by Oyéah at 8:25 PM on February 9, 2023 [6 favorites]

Rail Workers Tried to Warn Us the Ohio Train Derailment Would Happen (New Republic)

Includes some interesting details about train safety that I hadn’t previously known (I don’t know that much about trains, to be fair), such as how the weight distribution along the length of a train affects likelihood of derailment.
posted by eviemath at 8:42 PM on February 9, 2023 [32 favorites]

There’s a part David Graeber book where he talks to a cop that became a sociologist, who says that it’s never burglars who get beaten and brutalized by cops— it’s largely innocent people whose carrying on with their life contradicts a cop’s “privilege“ to define the situation and what behavior is expected in that situation. People shouting “he didn’t do anything!” are challenging the cop’s power to define a things in the name of the state. I suspect this is what happened to this broadcaster.
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:20 AM on February 10, 2023 [32 favorites]

Anyway nationalize the trains you cowards

Just tell Joe that, since he's president, it will mean that ALL the trains are his trains.

"ALL the trains?!"

Yes Joe, all of them.

My wife met him way back in the early '90s, on the train under the capital where he talked enthusiastically about the trains in Delaware. She only knew him as "that weird train guy" until he became Obama's running mate. I'm informed that this is extremely on brand for him.

Joe likes trains A LOT, is what I'm saying.
posted by VTX at 8:48 AM on February 10, 2023 [19 favorites]

Those poor people in East Palestine.
posted by subdee at 9:28 AM on February 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

Don’t train-shame us train lovers. The heart wants what it wants.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:48 AM on February 10, 2023 [12 favorites]

I live next to the train tracks, here in the big city. Grain goes by, bound for the port. Steel comes back in the other direction, Oil trains go by, on the way to the refineries. Chemical cars, with colorful danger bands, go by every day.

We have had only one derailment in the last 30 years. Fortunately, it was wheat and plywood that was spilled. The rails, sleepers, switches, and ballast have all been replaced since then.

Overall, it is pretty cool having a window into the economy. You can tell how things are going in general, based on the number of trains that go by. The rail lines are paralleled by power lines, gas transport lines, and telecommunications lines. This makes for a greenbelt, in contrast to the rather dense housing nearby. The rail proximity reduces property values. This is a plus. Of course we hope that we do not have another derailment.
posted by Midnight Skulker at 10:16 AM on February 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

srboisvert: police cars driving around announcing the evacuation and saying looters will be shot using megaphones

Looters would definitely think twice about boosting some VCRs if they know some Mountie is going to shout “BANG!” over a megaphone if they get caught.
posted by dr_dank at 10:31 AM on February 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

Another derailment with vinyl chloride a few years ago : Responders Did More Harm Than Good in Paulsboro Train Derailment: NSTB
posted by sepviva at 2:56 PM on February 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Wow #EastPalestine!

Back in December a union rail worker warned about the potential for a catastrophic train derailment. Then, a week ago, it happened in Ohio.

There were roughly 100,000 gallons or 1,000,000 pounds of Vinyl Chloride leaked, spilled and burned

This is my nephew who rescues and breeds animals. His fox were just outside the "zone".

Norfolk Southern is worth $55B billion .. and they're offering residents of East Palestine, OH $5. Each.

People with personal chickens 🐓 in East Palestine are all reporting ALL of their chickens are suddenly deceased. But the RR assures everyone the Plume of Death from the controlled explosion is “perfectly safe

According to the CDC, vinyl chloride can enter groundwater. It takes 4 to 11 weeks to biodegrade by 50 to 100% in soil. 28 to 110 days once it's in water. When it mixes with oxygen, a byproduct after about 4 days is hydrochloric acid.

Appears East Palestine is like 40 miles from Pittsburgh and 80 mils from Cleveland. OSHA sets a 1 ppm limit for vinyl chloride exposure over an 8 hour work day.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:49 PM on February 10, 2023 [7 favorites]

Even with what looks like a fairly well organized cover up at state and federal level I doubt anyone in that town is ever going to be able to sell their house.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 4:17 PM on February 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

My family spent five years living 15 miles from East Palestine, in Beaver, PA, a town on the Ohio River north of Pittsburgh, near the Ohio state line.

On Google Earth you can follow the Ohio River as it winds north from Pittsburgh, and see the scars of (now razed) steel mills that once filled the skies with filth from Bessemer furnace blows. At Midland the footprint of the mill my father once ran (now partly repurposed) is still clear, along with the adjacent community that once supplied millworkers.

The mills are gone but the towers from a nuclear power plant loom nearby at Shippingport, on the banks of the river as it winds toward Ohio, and at neighboring Industry there’s an ethylene cracker plant producing a million tons of plastic pellets a year.

For generations the folks along this part of the Ohio River have equated environmental degradation with prosperity and have consistently voted red, resisting efforts at regulation. Pittsburgh may be cleaned up now, but 50 years ago the town was proud of the smoke and flames that filled the sky. Convincing folks—who are still searching for an economic base to replace what they lost with the demise of Big Steel—that change is needed is a hard sell, even in the face of clear evidence of damage. No wonder there’s tension and hostility.
posted by kinnakeet at 8:09 AM on February 11, 2023 [9 favorites]

I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m shocked that this isn’t getting better national coverage. It feels like once the photogenic toxic smoke plume subsided a lot of reporters packed up and left.

Meanwhile, fish are dying in local waterways. I’m assuming “since that time we’ve been able to successfully control the runoff” is a clever way of saying “before that time the runoff was entirely uncontrolled.”

And here’s a brief description of how Precision Scheduled Railroading might have played a role (TikTok via YouTube, sorry).
posted by evidenceofabsence at 10:23 AM on February 11, 2023 [7 favorites]

I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m shocked that this isn’t getting better national coverage. It feels like once the photogenic toxic smoke plume subsided a lot of reporters packed up and left.

See, the derailment, the evacuation, the explosions, the big cloud, those are BOOM! BANG! KAPOW! Snazzy.

Tracking the after-effects on the community, its animals, its birds, its plants, its water supply, its residents, its neighboring communities, its effects on those downriver, short and long-term health concerns, following up consistently and repeatedly over a period of many years, and refusing to take responsible authorities at their word that Everything Has Been Cleaned Up Just Fine, Nothing To See Here, Move Along, Really, Just Keep Smiling?

That's work.
posted by delfin at 6:10 PM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

If I google "Norfolk Southern" and "stock buyback" I see:

Norfolk Southern Announces New $10 Billion Stock Repurchase Program (mar 2022)

What’s Driving The Growth For Norfolk Southern Stock? (dec 2022)

You can see this strategy of raising the stock price through stock buybacks across a range of industries, often while ignoring their flagging infrastructure, or while laying off a huge chunk of their workforce, leaving the remaining workers short-handed. These money people have all the wrong priorities.

Also, stock buybacks should be made illegal again. It literally is stock manipulation.
posted by ishmael at 9:25 PM on February 11, 2023 [11 favorites]

Also, stock buybacks should be made illegal again. It literally is stock manipulation.

Or, as they explain it to themselves, it's the "tax-efficient" alternative to paying dividends.
posted by clawsoon at 5:40 AM on February 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

After a train derailment, Ohio residents are living the plot of a movie they helped make
posted by chavenet at 1:34 PM on February 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh, if you are of a perverse and masochistic mindset like I am, do check out what some of our lesser-educated kindred are declaring on social media about this incident.

Hot takes range from "they're shooting down balloons to distract us from this chemical spill" to "they arranged this chemical spill to distract us from the spy balloons, if that is in fact what they are" to "Biden and Mayor Pete directly caused the derailment" to "this was all planned so they can claim that the CHEMICALS, not the COVID vaccines, are causing mass cancer" to "there's a complete mainstream media blackout on this event because they know the left is to blame and they don''t want real journalists documenting the sabotage and activities" to "everyone even remotely connected to the Ohio River is now full of cancer" to "the acid rain is dissolving cars 70 miles away" to "all of the journalists are being arrested for telling the truth" to my current favorite, "this explosion and burnoff were deliberately planned to punish eastern Ohio's large Amish community for being independent and for achieving herd immunity against COVID."

Not everyone is a loon over this. I'm seeing folks from all over the political spectrum, including some card-carrying serial right-wing bozos I've been mocking for years, united in their calling out of Norfolk Southern and the profit-at-any-cost mentality. But if you seek hilarity, hilarity awaits but a few clicks away.
posted by delfin at 7:01 AM on February 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

content/trigger warning: discussions of sickened animals and lost pets in linked article

Life After the Ohio Train Derailment: Trouble Breathing, Dying Animals, and Saying Goodbye

Saved link for people hitting a paywall on this article

Amanda Greathouse, who resides near the crash site, evacuated about one hour after the incident. She only returned home on February 10, a full week later, to retrieve personal effects like bank and ID cards. Even then, as she and her family walked through the home donning N-95 masks and gloves, an ominous odor pervaded. After leaving, her eyes burned and itched, her throat was sore, and she had a rash; her husband and both her sisters had migraines.

The next day, the family went to Norfolk Southern’s community family assistance center to obtain the $1,000 inconvenience check. After a four-hour wait, Greathouse was informed they needed more documents. The family was forced to return to their home again to retrieve additional documents, and left with renewed symptoms.

I'm genuinely afraid that lack of options/financial assistance from Norfolk Southern is going to doom a lot of these people to a slow, painful death because they just don't have anywhere else to go. Who is going to buy out their mortgages? or pay for timely cancer screenings? Test the groundwater supply, or the soil in their kids' playgrounds?

It's appalling to me that both state and federal government have been eerily silent on helping out this community. This company literally put stock buybacks above human lives, and at this point, that feels like the most American thing I could possibly type. We're the richest nation on Earth, and we're all just supposed to sit here and do NOTHING? It's surreal.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 8:55 AM on February 14, 2023 [9 favorites]

You don't need to make stock-buy-backs illegal, just predictable. They authorize "up to" X amount and then decide how much of that and when to do it and report it after. If they had to be a regular thing with the amount declared well in advance and the amount they declare is the amount they spend on buy backs. The lack of predictability is the problem, otherwise it'd get accounted for just like dividends do.

It's just another way to return capital to shareholders. Of course, if you required something like the same predictability from buy backs as dividends then they pretty well lose their usefulness.

But, hey, it's not banned.
posted by VTX at 9:27 AM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

I bet people all over the country who live near railroad tracks will see the offers they get when they try to sell fall below what they would have been over the next few years, and it would be nice to see them take it to the railroads in a class action suit, but I doubt it will happen.
posted by jamjam at 3:07 PM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

This story still isn't over... (nyt gift link)
posted by hydra77 at 3:12 PM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

This company literally put stock buybacks above human lives, and at this point, that feels like the most American thing I could possibly type. We're the richest nation on Earth, and we're all just supposed to sit here and do NOTHING? It's surreal.

I mean, we are the country that decided the physical reopening of Wall Street was more important than the fact that a massive chemical fire including asbestos, jet fuel, plastics, and god knows what else was burning for two months in lower Manhattan. And had the EPA say everything was safe. And did nothing to help local residents evacuate or move. And told Stuyvesant kids to go back to school not just near Ground Zero, but on a campus now infested with lead in the vents and asbestos everywhere.

The convenient thing about disasters like this is that health effects are not immediately evident. Yeah, lower Manhattanites would cough a ton and feel unsafe and know officials were probably lying, but they wouldn't manifest the weird cancers until years down the line.

Appalled for East Palestine and the surrounding areas...
posted by desert outpost at 9:40 PM on February 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Gaslit Nation episode on this. Very concerning, the tangents that converge.
posted by progosk at 9:27 AM on February 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

Abehammerb Lincoln: "Having come of age in a Michigan town much smaller than Kalamazoo

Ypsi?"

Other side of the state! Berrien County.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:14 AM on February 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

It contains some hyperbole but some limited evidence for unburned vinyl chloride being detected in NYC and Kentucky.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:08 PM on February 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

America averages one [dangerous] chemical accident every two days

I'd maybe have front page posted that one, but just recently posted about highly carcinogenic fuels from plastics.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:33 PM on February 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

The idea that open burning did anything other than disperse the poison more broadly was absurd on its face, anyway

Here in Seatlle, when City Light had a substation full of PCB contaminated transformer oil to deal with, they took over a block of the street the substation was on and built five huge furnaces right in the middle of the road, with the outputs of the first four furnaces connected to the inputs of the next furnace in line, because that's what it took to be sure they'd burned all the PCBs instead of just putting them in a plume to settle over the city.
posted by jamjam at 1:46 PM on February 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Ministers told to get a grip on scale of ‘forever chemicals’ pollution in UK
posted by jeffburdges at 2:36 PM on February 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Synthetics created in the 20th century have become an evolutionary force, altering human biology and the web of life
posted by jeffburdges at 10:56 PM on February 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Here’s the real reason the EPA doesn’t want to test for toxins in East Palestine
"The agency is familiar with dioxins, having researched its adverse effects, and if they test the soil in East Palestine for it, they will find it"
posted by jeffburdges at 4:10 PM on March 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Appears the activism which caused that article pushed the EPA into ordering dioxin testing, but maybe only at the crash site.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:33 PM on March 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

Ohio police link Erin Brockovich to 'special interest terrorism' threat in East Palestine because she is organizing residents in East Palestine to challenge the rail company that poisoned their town (via Steven Donziger).
posted by jeffburdges at 4:35 AM on March 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Erin Brockovich holds second town hall meeting in East Palestine
I've not watched it but residents should get blood & urine tests, and keep a journal of any symptoms.
posted by jeffburdges at 7:27 AM on March 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ohio police link Erin Brockovich to 'special interest terrorism' threat in East Palestine

That just floors me, that the police could be so shameless in their defence of capital and power... I hope that EB helps the residents be made fully whole, with icing and cherries on top.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:25 AM on March 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

Around this, there is a free one day conference on criminalizing climate defenders on 31 March at QMUL School of Law.

We should've another FPP whenever someone finds a good written resource on what tactics Norfolk Southern uses here, understanding of which EB and her lawyers bring.

As always, Norfolk Southern's decision to burn the vinyl chloride represent their belief that while a concentrated localized cleanup sounds way simpler, they'd actually pay more, while if they spread out the mess enough then they'd cause worse health & environmental damage overall, but spend less themselves.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:43 PM on March 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

"Soil is being sent to a nearby incinerator with a history of clean air violations, raising fears the chemicals will be redistributed"

"Environmental researchers say the combustion of vinyl chloride almost certainly created dioxins, a highly toxic chemical that can remain in the environment for years. However, the EPA has resisted calls to test for it, and the agency removed from its website the results of its in-depth soil analyses, so it’s unclear which chemicals are in the soil."
posted by jeffburdges at 4:44 PM on March 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

A second Norfolk Southern train derailed in Ohio tonight, this time near Springfield.
posted by riruro at 4:51 PM on March 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Norfolk Southern's decision to burn the vinyl chloride

Sorry as I have not carefully followed, but how does this even happen? If I had a tub of this shit in my backyard and set fire to it I am sure the EPA and other gov't agencies would be all over me. How does the company get to decide to do this?
posted by Meatbomb at 11:17 PM on March 4, 2023 [1 favorite]