East Palestine, Ohio Railroad disaster.

Mott the Hoople said:
Thanks for the link. I don’t think I can bear to read through the thread. I will opine that the reporting on this has incidence depressed me at an all time low. The Journalist just simply don’t understand the significance of the information they receive or how to communicate them.
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Science writing/reporting isn't what it used to be. Why not then just report verbatim what the officials say, and then provide links to explanations?
 
Hawkeye10 said:
That brings up another question....has the criteria for setting an alarm, alerting the crew, taking action changed?

And was this with government approval?
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There has been discussion post accident about putting in additional sensors closer together than are currently required along tracks, but that would take lots of time and money to implement.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
It was a very high risk. Vinyl Chloride has a flash point of -108 deg F and a boiling point of 8 deg .

As for the phosgene, HCl and CO those would have been combustion products from incomplete combustion of the vinyl chloride. There wouldn’t be a great of phosgene produced by such a burn and it would have quickly been diluted into the atmosphere to below non hazardous levels and essentially that would be true of the HCl and CO. The HCl and CO would have only been a health issue if you were near the plume at its source. Phosgene I don’t think will be an issue at all as we don’t even know for certain if it was produced. Which is like one of those things I was bitching about that the reporters didn’t understand.

I’ve seen worse than this and larger remediated successfully.
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Incomplete combustion also produces hydrogen and nitrogen cyanide as byproducts. Neither will be present in deadly amounts, but there could be sufficient amounts that people exposed get crashing bad headaches that last for days.
 
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PVC is a vinyl plastic used for water and gas pipes. It is highly durable and can outlast metal pipes. HDPE is an alternative to PVC and made from ethylene monomer. It's more durable, shock resistant and gasket or gluing sealant is used to join PVC pipes. HDPE pipes are joined by heat fusion. Hence, while PVC pipe fittings can be joined underwater, HDPE cannot. Both plastics are excellent for electrical insulation but HDPE has the edge when come to UV resistance.
 
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ThatOwlWoman said:
Science writing/reporting isn't what it used to be. Why not then just report verbatim what the officials say, and then provide links to explanations?
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Well that would sell a lot of newspapers. LOL the real truth is there’s not a whole lot of journalists educated in the sciences. That’s why most top scientists don’t like to talk to reporters. The just always seem to get it wrong. That and a lot of them are too lazy or don’t have funds to actually go to the site and observe how things are playing out in the real world. So their opinions and editorial comments are pretty meaningless.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
Incomplete combustion also produces hydrogen and nitrogen cyanide as byproducts. Neither will be present in deadly amounts, but there could be sufficient amounts that people exposed get crashing bad headaches that last for days.
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Yea that would be more an issue with the tanker of acrylates. You need lots of air for vinyl chloride to form cyano decomposition products. The acrylates are composed in part of Nitrogen. They will form cyanide decomposition products. The reality is that after the incident are these hazardous decomposition products so diluted that they don’t present a hazard to human health and the environment.

They gonna monitor the ground, air and water for a long, long time to come and if any time they detect anything above unsafe limits by regulatory standards then they will be required to implement a written action plan on how they are going to mitigate the problem.

It’s the short term exposures that is going be the primary issue with the secondary issue is going to be relocation cost because no one in their right mind will want to live there. Property values will crash. Business developers will avoid the place. Their life as they new it has been irrevocably changed. Some will lose jobs and many are going to feel they have no choice but as safety precaution they will need to relocate to some place safe and all the assurances by the Railroad and the Government that it’s safe won’t mean squat.

I bet there’s more attorneys in East Palestine than residents. Things will get ugly.
 
serendipity said:
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PVC is a vinyl plastic used for water and gas pipes. It is highly durable and can outlast metal pipes. HDPE is an alternative to PVC and made from ethylene monomer. It's more durable, shock resistant and gasket or gluing sealant is used to join PVC pipes. HDPE pipes are joined by heat fusion. Hence, while PVC pipe fittings can be joined underwater, HDPE cannot. Both plastics are excellent for electrical insulation but HDPE has the edge when come to UV resistance.
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I was watching some HDPE water pipes being laid recently. A boring machine created a tunnel and the pipe was dragged through, fascinating business. Also watched the pipes being joined by being heat fused, clever stuff.

 
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