Submitted by ghostofhogan t3_111hbdu in washingtondc
Is anyone in this thread a scientist, or someone who could enlighten (with some authenticity) the rest of us about the train derailment situation in Ohio? After the controlled detonation I must admit, I’m a little afraid we are going to receive some of the toxic air here in DMV. East Palestine isn’t as far away as you might think and a strong easterly wind might be all that is needed…
Wow. Finally, someone who actually knows something provided an intelligible response. Thank you so much for taking the time. 🙏🏻
You’re welcome!
> There is no way this event could impact us in the DMV.
Exactly what everyone else was telling you.
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User name checks out. Thank you!
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Your are almost correct.😊 If the actual half-life (50%) was 1.5 days, then 25% would be 2.25 days. So the high volatilization of vinyl chloride and it’s short half life allows for it to dissipate in roughly 2 days. Could be slightly more but we are splitting hairs at that point.
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If it's like radioactivity, then it would be 3 days. 1.5 days to reduce by 50% and then another 1.5 days to reduce by another 50% to 25%.
I thought half life referred to the time it took for the radioactivity, or in this case potency(?), of something to reduce by half
Half life is not just used for radioactivity. Half life of a chemical reaction is the time it takes to reach 50% of its original concentration. That being said, in the environmental and toxicology space, they utilize that term to denote the timeframe where the chemical is of less concern to be in the atmosphere. Vinyl chloride’s volatilization takes 1 to 2 days in air. “If vinyl chloride is released to the atmosphere, it can be expected to exist mainly in the vapor-phase in the ambient atmosphere and to degrade rapidly in air by gas-phase reaction with photochemically produced hydroxyl radicals with an estimated half-life of 1.5 days.” Direct quote from this technical fact sheet: https://semspub.epa.gov/work/05/437069.pdf
Half life plays a role in medications we take too, for example, my mom takes Lisinopril (A.C.E. inhibitor to lower blood pressure) I took one by mistake one time, doc said not only does it get along with the few meds I take, it's half life is only 12.5hrs. Medications are are at their peak efficiency when most of their ingrediencies are working together to give yo the pest Their half life is considered when the ingrediencies are only working half potential. So bottom line if a medication has 6hr half life, it should affect you for appx 6 hrs, and take aapx 12 h for it to be out of your system.;
Ceases to exist? Where does it go?
It’s a chemical compound that breaks down into other less harmful elements and compounds. Where does the wood in a bonfire “go”?
Geology is awesome
This was so cool to read. more more more!
Half-life aside, how much dilution has taken place between the release and when it got here? It’s practically homeopathic at this point, regardless.
When it got where?
The DMV, which is what the OP was freaking out about.
It isn’t here though..
Exactly!
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https://response.epa.gov/site/site_profile.aspx?site_id=15933
> February 7, 2023 Update
>During Norfolk Southern’s controlled burn yesterday of rail cars containing vinyl chloride, U.S. EPA air monitoring detected particulate matter resulting from the fire. U.S. EPA air monitoring did not detect chemical contaminants of concern in the hours following the controlled burn.
>Residents in the area and tens of miles away may smell odors coming from the site. This is because the byproducts of the controlled burn have a low odor threshold. This means people may smell these contaminants at levels much lower than what is considered hazardous.
I’m not worried about this at all here, but if I were in Ohio I’d be taking that statement with a grain of salt. EPA is the same agency that said the air near ground zero was safe.
It’s a little more nuanced than that:
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-12/documents/wtc_report_20030821.pdf
How so? The first takeaway in that report confirms what I said, they stated the air was safe without the proper evidence that was required to do so.
You were being vague, maybe unintentionally, when you say that EPA stated air near Ground Zero was safe and you didn’t say anything about a lack of proper evidence.
Regardless, that was 20 years ago.
Did you look at the extensive information they have posted to the site I linked regarding the current event?
Don’t get me wrong. I have no doubt that immediate area is a pollutant shitshow. And we will probably learn that while getting exposed to chemicals X, Y, or Z at certain levels isn’t going to kill you, getting exposed to the XYZ cocktail at the dose the poor people who live next to the tracks won’t be so good.
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See. That’s the thing. You’re conflating things. The EPA was explicit that the air at Groud Zero, specifically, the “pile”, was unsafe and that respirators should be worn. It was NYC that had jurisdiction in that regard.
The surrounding neighborhoods, yeah, maybe they didn’t have enough data to say the air was safe when they did. But even the majority of those people disregarded the instructions they were given for decontaminating indoor areas.
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Where’s the report that said they were saying the air was safe at Ground Zero?
They weren’t. They said the air at Ground Zero was dangerous and respirators should be worn. That was disregarded or poorly addressed by NYC and FDNY brass who had jurisdiction.
Since you haven’t provided a single link, here’s another for you for ProPublica ripping the EPA for telling the community the air was safe but: > Officials seemed to be sending two distinct messages: telling office workers and residents the air was safe, while repeatedly warning first responders and crews working right on the debris pile to wear protective gear. Those conflicting assurances and warnings given by federal officials left workers and residents unsure what steps to take to protect themselves.
OSHA and NYOSH failed the FDNY there. Not the EPA.
Thank you! I’m actually relatively close to the site at the moment and was wondering this…whether the EPA or some other federal body was monitoring the air. I figured they were, but couldn’t find anything definitive that said it.
There's nothing wrong with making yourself an air cleaner with a box fan and HEPA filters from Lowes, changing your HVAC filter, and perhaps buying a water filter for drinking water. It's just common sense, not paranoia or anti-government.
Fish and animals are dying. I think it’s reasonable if you live in the area around East Palestine to NOT drink the water.
Just remember how at first scientists said Covid wasn’t airborne….
we have a winner
Yes, but what if I don't want to believe this?
Go build your cabin in the woods somewhere and start recycling your rainwater I suppose
Plot twist, rural Ohio just minutes from the next derailment
Then don’t ask us, just GTFO
At the end of the day there is nothing we could do about it and it is affecting far more people than those in the DMV.
Uh, we could leave town if it’s expected to impact the region in any significant way. That’s what I’m getting at.
The controlled release was a week ago. Like 4 Chinese balloons have come and gone since then.
🤣🤣🤣
How many Scaramucci's are we talking about?
Everything should be measured in Scaramuccis. (Edit: everything time-based & I accept Trusses if you are international.)
Yeah, and the controlled release will burn much longer and will likely do far more damage than any countless number of Chinese balloons.
The controlled release burned until Wednesday. The fire is out.
To be fair... fire leads to smoke and particle dissemination which outlasts the fire itself.
If a chemical factory is dumping waste in a river, does the waste just disappear when the dumping stops?
Apparently the toxic cloud is going to disappear over Ohio, and reappear just outside the Beltway.
The fire ended a week ago. It has come and gone.
The amount of chemical exposure isn’t even a blip relative to the background deluge we willingly and/or unknowingly expose ourselves on a daily basis.
Even at that, our risk decreases exponentially with our distance from the site.
the balloons are just a distraction from the train chemical spill. There's a pretty obvious news blackout on the chemical burn because it undercuts Biden's anti-union stance which almost directly led to this exact situation.
😆
Where would you go? You can’t go further east, we’re already near the coast.
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Easy! Travel south, and then west. Circumvent the gas, ya know.
If you’re really worried just wear (or keep wearing) an N95, you’ll be golden! You’ll feel a bit safer and you don’t even need to travel!
To go where exactly?
I don’t think your thought is as stupid as the downvotes make it appear. It’s a legitimate concern to have and I appreciate you asking this question.
☺️
Do not listen to insane fear mongering on Twitter. The air quality effects of local highways and power plants are more impacful than an accident that is already over.
"An accident that is already over" is a weird way to talk about an ecological disaster.
​
Chernobyl is already over.
I'm not saying it's not bad. I'm saying that insane fear mongering, such as comparing this to Cherbobyl, is the mark of people unable to tamp down on their anxieties about everything and thus shouldn't be taken seriously.
Experts on the ground have compared this to a nuclear bomb being set off over the town. While this is also hyperbole, you can’t blame people for freaking out about this. This event was much worse than just “bad” for the people affected by it.
I'm not comparing it to Chernobyl. I am saying that an ecological disaster isn't over because the immediate explosion has stopped.
Fish and animals are dying….it’s not over. There is no way to predict the long term effects of this given how much nature is interconnected.
You are missing the context here. OP is talking about evacuating DC due to this incident. That is the insane fear mongering I'm talking about, and my comment about this being over is related to that specific concern of theirs.
If it could get all the way to us and still be the least bit detectable, everyone in Pittsburgh would be dead.
I mean, "detectable" no but if you substitute "hazardous" then I'd agree. We can detect absurdly low concentrations of stuff
Why are people downvoting this? It’s a serious concern. Good lord.
It’s hard to say. I finally stopped asking myself that.
I think it’s because of the erosion of faith in institutions leading us to question if the official narratives we are hearing are factually correct or politically expedient. I am not overly concerned here but I would not want to be using the water around that area
Looks like someone just watched White Noise
Ironically many of the current victims were extras in scenes shot around there.
Woa, that's.... interesting.
YIKES
Never seen it, but maybe I’ll watch it now.
It's hilarious, definitely worth your time.
Nothing short of a nuclear accident could be of concern from something so localized this far away.
Don't mean to disagree with anyone, and while I totally agree there is a lot of misinformation, bad reporting, and in some cases overreactions on certain aspects, I believe there are a few things to keep an eye on. I was a firefighter/medic for 27yrs, and most of those years I was a member of our county's HazMat response team, trained as a hazardous materials 1st in technician. I may not have the scholastic pedigree of seasoned scientists (but I do have mad respect for what they do) but we had quite of bit of extra training to be on the team, classroom and in the big scary looking hazmat suit..lol, so I'm just going to throw my two cents in if you don't mind, and give you a bunch of links so you can do some of your own research.
So I'm in the St. Louis area, which is about 50miles further than you are from the incident I believe and I'm leaning towards the optimistic side of being concerned, granted the Ohio river does empty into the Mississippi river not too far from me. For two main reasons...one is that vinyl chloride is by far not the only chemical release they had, although it does pose the greatest risk, and is what the media seems to be focused on, there are a few others of some concern. Secondly, most people are using the EPA to get their information from and are the lead organization on the investigation. Now the EPA are excellent at providing information on an incident like this, during and the immediate aftermath for several weeks, but for long term consequences, and this part here is more my opinion from past experience, seem to be more concerned, or maybe equally concerned, at getting back to "normal' and squashing any fears of long term issues that paint the incident in any more of a bad light. I feel this way because the leadership of the organization has become a little too political for my taste in the recent past, and also this letter here to Norfolk Southern Railroad, that they made very public, very quickly, that spells out in detail, the responsibility of any and all negative events or outcomes resulting from this incident solely lies at the feet of Norfolk Southern Railroad. I'm guessing so if people or animals start dropping dead, regardless if it's because the EPA gave the green light for people to return home, or businesses to reopen, they won't get blamed for it. Letter from EPA to Railroad
This is not my opinion, this is a given, we WILL see long term consequences to our environment for years to come, the scope and severity of which I am not certain at this time, but they will occur. The chemicals that should also be at least mentioned by more media are of less concern than vinyl chloride, but these, which I found with a little help from a former colleague still on the job, I want to mentions. I got it from this, it's a bill of laden of sorts, from Norfolk Southern Railroad to the EPA I believe, not anything secret, I found it on the internet, just needed some help finding it. The green, orange and yellow boxes that are completely highlighted were done so by the railroad or the creator of the document, the red, purple and brown areas that are circled, I did, to simplify it a bit more. ( I will also use this for a future training class with my former department in which I still attend once in a while). The Chemicals they have highlighted green are the ones they are concerned most about, and match up with the ones that concerned me the most, after reading about a list of possible chemicals in another story about the incident. Bill of Lading
Ok, while the media and our geologist covered vinyl chloride accurately and you're aware of it, the other chemical other than that one, which gave me the most concern, was Ethylene Glycol Monobutyl Ether, say that three times fast, right? So what concerned me about this one is that it's got the most information available about chronic, or long term, effects. A lot of the information available online about everyday chemicals we use, especially MSDS (material safety data sheets) made my the manufacturer of the chemical(s) have a very small section about chronic effects, they won't even use the verbiage "long term". Often the these sections have a lot of the phrase "no valid information at this time", which is good and bad, because there's always studies and papers being done by scientists, organizations, and companies, and while there my be a plethora of them to read through, often they are not peer reviewed or substantiated by any credible journals, and if everyone were included on MSDS forms, it could make them unreliable. At the same time, practically needs to be handed down by a royal figure before it will be accepted into the MSDS, so if you do see anything listed in that chronic effects section, it's something you should at least pay attention to for a while if you've been exposed, and this chemical had more than your average chronic effects. Here is very detailed, and yes boring, data sheet on everything you'd want to know about this chemical EGME data sheet Here is an official complaint, I guess, to the U.S. Federal Registry about this chemical, so obviously it's been an issue with the environment and our safety in the past Community Complaint
This one concerned be due to an odd lack of information I was able to dig up on it, and because of an abundance of links I found about this chemical, R Butyl Acrylates, Stabilized, being involved in several environmental concerns in Great Lakes NY. I didn't have time to dig into it further, but here is a link to a search result with lots of stories on it Great Lakes NY stories
This last one, Isobutylene, is fairly harmless, but with long term or frequent exposure, or by mixing with other chemicals it can result in a type of benzene that is the chemical at the center of the bad water at Camp Lejeune, that has all the military vets dying and a big law suite going on. Data sheet Camp Lejeune article
Let me wrap up by saying, again, I am not disputing mrsgeolotigst at all, the info she gave about the that specific chemical and the chances of it harming you in the DC area (btw, I don't think many outside DC know what DMV stands for, took me 20min on google to figure it out..lol) I'm only adding that there could be further concerns beyond the scope of her response, as far as acute danger, you are all fine, long term you're most likely going to be just fine too, I did read that Maryland and Virginian already have testing up and running for water, and are being extremely pro active about monitoring water and air for their respective states. The environmental impacts will that I'm more certain of will most likely occur closer to the incident sight, and far reaching somewhere down river, or the ocean, that will be subtle at first but add to the list of things we humans have messed up with mother nature. Here's some helpful links if you want to research further, that you don't have to be a scientist to understand most of what they offer.
NIOSH has a guide book that is in the holy trinity of resources when it comes to HazMat NIOSH website,
Another CDC organization, but this time they deal with prevention, action plans, community based actions to an incident, rather than focusing on the chemicals themselves. ATSDR
This last one despite being around a long time, I just learned about in the last year or so, and really like that it's an international organization, of scientists, especially chemists, that pool information, and just have tons of resources, news and more at their website C&EN
There's nothing wrong with making yourself an air cleaner with a box fan and HEPA filters from Lowes, changing your HVAC filter, and perhaps buying a water filter for drinking water. It's just common sense, not paranoia or anti-government.
Idk why but I feel like Reddit is not the place you are going to get a reliable answer for this
People and the news are seriously overblowing this incident. It was bad, don’t get me wrong, but calling it a “mini-Chernobyl” is just fully inaccurate. We’ll be totally fine here.
I’m equally as worried about the CSX lines that run through this area.
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There's a mountain range better between DC and Ohio. All of Ohio drains in to the Great Lakes or ultimately the Mississippi, so not an issue.
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Someone in another thread said vinyl chloride turns into phosgene when it burns which has been used as a chemical weapon before. I cannot confirm the accuracy of that as I do not personally know myself.
to play it safe better hop on a plane to Europe
Not possible because of physics. These aren’t radioactive particles
Uh, you've heard of wind, right?
Nothing in any concentration to be of concern would make it here
Are there any non-smart asses in the chat? 😂
Ok fine - yes we're all in grave danger and you should evacuate immediately. Is that what you wanted to hear?
Yes, precisely.
Be sure take a fresh roll of tin foil to make new hats.
mrsgeologist t1_j8g8gbi wrote
I am a geologist and work in the environmental remediation space. I responded to a similar post earlier today under the NoVA page.
There is a lot of misinformation out there on the internet in regards to this emergency response event. There is no way this event could impact us in the DMV. The half-life of vinyl chloride is 1-2 days in air (meaning it ceases to exist after that time). If you refer to a vinyl chloride Safety Data Sheet, you will determine that it is a liquid under pressure, but immediately becomes explosive when mixed with air. That is why the emergency response entity determined that they had to “burn” it off. There really was no other way to deal with the vinyl chloride once it was exposed to air. The burn off is scary and unfortunate, but within 1-2 days it is no longer present in the atmosphere. The long term investigation will more so be related with groundwater. That is something I cannot speak to because I have not seen the data and delineation of contamination can take a while to determine. There was an immediate die off of aquatic animals since vinyl chloride is highly toxic and it hit surface water bodies. Aquatic life pull oxygen from water to breath. Vinyl chloride is more soluble in water.