Medical response to a vinyl chloride release from a train derailment (2017)
There are three important lessons to take away from the East Palestine derailment disaster:<p>1. All sides of the US political system represent corporate interests. Contemporaneously, Biden&#x27;s DoJ filed an amicus brief in support of Norfolk Southern&#x27;s case currently before the Supreme Court to limit lawsuits [1], the kind that will inevitably result from this kind of chemical release. And yes, the same Norfolk Southern;<p>2. Media isn&#x27;t so much politically biased as it is a tool of and for corporate interests. The East Palestine case had a virtual media blackout for the first 1-2 weeks. Concurrently there was wall-to-wall media coverage about a Chinese balloon, a complete non-story. Think about that and why; and<p>3. As much as many will make (often legitimate) complaints about social media, independent reporting on East Palestine on social media absolutely forced the administration&#x27;s hand into having to respond. Black clouds from burning vinyl chloride visible from planes flying by (and probably from space), dead fish in rivers, etc were getting wide distribution on Tiktok, Twitter and elsewhere.<p>There is failure here at every level. There is no single bad actor. A partial list:<p>- Allowing railroads to skirt safety to chase higher profits aka Precision Scheduled Railroading (&quot;PSR&quot;);<p>- Failure of safety systems to detect and prevent such a crash;<p>- Failure to identify and disclose what had been and potentially could be spilled. Vinyl Chloride was known about quickly but there are other like contaminants that didn&#x27;t come to light until later;<p>- The Ohio governor playing politics and not calling for Federal help;<p>- There are some large question marks with what Norfolk Southern did with that extra time. Who knows what evidence &quot;disappeared&quot;?<p>- The carriage carrying vinyl chloride itself was only preserved after a social media backed public outcry really forced the administration into action and the NTSB got involved;<p>- The administration&#x27;s response was terrible. Biden could&#x27;ve absolutely forced Ohio&#x27;s hand here by just talking about or even visiting the site;<p>- McKinsey alum and likely future presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg as Transportation Secretary failed to respond in any way, probably not wanting to upset future donors;<p>- Testing at the site and the surrounding areas has largely been inadequate, mainly in what they&#x27;re testing for or, more specifically, what they aren&#x27;t testing for. There are contamination experts who have independently talked about this;<p>- Policy around what constitutes a hazardous train and the requiring brakes upgrades were rules initially proposed in the Obama administration, watered down after lobbying, repealed under Trump and not resinstituted under Biden;<p>- No one will go to jail for this and that&#x27;s really what needs to happen. Fines are just the cost of doing business;<p>- You may find that liability for cleanup and compensation ends up being limited in some way. Fun fact (and example): Congress passed a law to limit liability for nuclear plant operators in the case of a disaster [2];<p>- Biden and Congress both sided with rail companies recently and used their power to end a rail worker&#x27;s strike that was partly motivated by safety concerns.<p>This is a systemic problem. It is not a Democrat vs Republican issue. Both sides are united behind corporate interests. Deregulation is nothing more than increasing profits by shifting costs to the public. The government is complicit in this.<p>I don&#x27;t know how many times we&#x27;ll need to pollute the environment and poison people before we start cottoning on to this.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.levernews.com&#x2F;bidens-doj-backing-norfolk-southern-case-to-block-lawsuits&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.levernews.com&#x2F;bidens-doj-backing-norfolk-souther...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;crsreports.congress.gov&#x2F;product&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;IF&#x2F;IF10821#:~:text=Nuclear Power Accident Liability,to members of the public" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;crsreports.congress.gov&#x2F;product&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;IF&#x2F;IF10821#:~:te...</a>.