Pete Buttigieg And Chernobyl in Ohio
Sam Faddis
15 hr ago
I guess if you are going to be the worst President in American history you want a Transportation Secretary that is equally bad. Pete Buttigieg, the man who ran for President on a solid record of mediocrity and being gay, certainly fits that bill. Ask the people of East Palestine, Ohio. ...
Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation decided to make it much worse. Authorities made the decision to burn the vinyl chloride to prevent derailed tanker cars from exploding. When vinyl chloride burns it turns into hydrogen chloride. When hydrogen chloride enters the atmosphere it bonds with water vapor and forms hydrochloric acid. That means hundreds of thousands of pounds of acid have now been released into the environment. ...
Where is Buttigieg, our Secretary of Transportation? Busy with other matters. In public announcements and comments recently, he has talked about the dangers posed by an excess of white people working in construction. He has also had time to talk about a book called “Song of Achilles” a gay rewrite of the Iliad. He hasn’t said a word about East Palestine, Ohio.
The area surrounding the burn is already feeling the impact of the release of the immense amount of acid in question. Fish are dying. Farm animals are dying. Contamination of the Ohio River has now been reported as far as West Virginia. The Ohio River feeds into the Mississippi. ...
https://andmagazine.substack.com/p/pete-buttigieg-and-chernobyl-in-ohio?fbclid=IwAR0TKfD3QVdLPObmPKQowefhJVJNV7iC_NXqDF9rS-qK2vuemxkmcU3eC4Q
Wrong.
Try a 100 PPM exposure to HCl for a week. You might get a little itchy, maybe some slight congestion, and possible a little eye irritation. Try 100 PPM in your shower water, and you likely won't notice, unless you have extremely sensitive skin. Stomach acid (also HCl) is a lot stronger.
But do that with vinyl chloride, and there is a solid chance you will develop liver cancer. The "safe" exposure limit for those who work around it is one part per million for 8 hours.
Considering allowing it to spill and possibly get into the soil/water table, even in small concentrations
I have posted the MSDS info for vinyl chloride. If it was going to spill, it would be in the groundwater for a long time, provided it did not just evaporate (boiling point is 7.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Burning it was likely considered the safer option if it (a pressurized, liquefied gas at warmer temperatures then 8 above) could not be safely transferred to other containers/vehicles to be transported away, something complicated by its volatility and wide explosive concentration range when mixed with air.
Considering the potential for disaster involving first responders and others (human lives), sometimes it is less hazardous in the long run to burn or allow the cargo to burn than put it out and try to recover it.
When I first got in the oilfield, the Penrod toolpusher had a flare gun, and told me in case he was unable to do so, that if we ever had a blowout in Hydrogen Sulfide Gas (H2S) to burn the rig, because 1000 PPM in air will kill you before you can exhale, and they didn't want to risk a cloud of that blowing around. I askedabout the guys on the rig, and he basically said if they aren't off there by the time it got that bad, they would already be dead.
Now, when H2S burns, it produces another toxic, acid gas: Sulfur Dioxide, which combines with moisture in the air to make sulfurous acid (H2SO3). That's nasty enough, but it won't kill you in mid stride like H2S.
Likely the choice to burn the cargo was similar.
