I think it's great if people are vigilant regarding threats to clean air and water, and if people don't want to take the Ohio Governor's statements at face value when he says samples look clear, I can relate.
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?
19,000 Americans died as the result of a gunshot (excluding suicides) in 2020.
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.
Yes. The carcinogenic effects of acute exposure to vinyl chloride are low, and most of it was burned off intentionally by setting the train cars on fire.
Those most at risk are the first responders; everyone who heeded the evacuation order should be pretty much fine.
Some risk, yes, which is why I mentioned the first responders, as they were closest to the burn itself.
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").
My understanding is that the railroad recently implemented a new system to try to run tighter schedules with less staff and that railway workers attempted to strike because of overwork due to staff reductions. Those seem like plausible contributions to this disaster that could be addressed.
and if this happened just outside Atlanta, it would be all over the news for the next month..and senators would call it racial injustice. Not to mention every govt agency on site.
Train derailments happen regularly every week, but not to this extent. It’ll be an ecological disaster. The water may be fine now, but no so much in a month. Ground water seepage takes time.
You are trying to compare a large toxin spill against a municipal failing to upgrade their infrastructure. This is similar to Flint, MI.
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.
Or the mass freakout about covid... forcing people to do all sorts of silly health theatre seems to be fine in some circumstances- you can never be too careful when it comes to a politically popular health concern, but somehow (and I admit I don't understand the political angle here) people are saying "oh yeah there's lots of reasons why water can have an oily sheen on top of it". The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but it's weird to see the doublethink
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.