Safe and effective™ train wreck handling? Or double train wreck?

How the EPA has lifted a page from the CDC and FDA playbook

Most by now have no doubt heard about the train that derailed on February 3 in East Palestine, Ohio. This train was carrying many cars filled with toxic chemicals (most chemicals are transported by train) including five cars of vinyl chloride. According to PubChem:

Vinyl chloride is primarily used to make polyvinyl chloride to manufacture plastics. Exposure to this substance affects the central and peripheral nervous system and causes liver damage. Prolonged exposure to vinyl chloride can cause a set of symptoms that is characterized by Raynaud's phenomenon, joint and muscle pain and scleroderma-like skin changes. Vinyl chloride is a known human carcinogen and is associated with an increased risk of developing liver cancer, predominantly angiosarcoma of the liver, but is also linked to brain and lung cancer as well as cancer of the lymphatic and hematopoietic system.

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Vinyl-Chloride

Needless to say, vinyl chloride is not something you want in your air, your food, or your drinking water. As a matter of fact, according to the CDC (if you care to trust them):

The odor of vinyl chloride becomes detectable at around 3,000 ppm and the OSHA PEL is 1 ppm (8-hour TWA). Therefore, workers can be overexposed to vinyl chloride without being aware of its presence. A 5-minute exposure to airborne concentrations of 8,000 ppm can cause dizziness. As airborne levels increase to 20,000 ppm, effects can include drowsiness, loss of coordination, visual and auditory abnormalities, disorientation, nausea, headache, and burning or tingling of the extremities. Exposure to higher concentrations of vinyl chloride for longer durations can cause death, presumably due to central nervous system (CNS) and respiratory depression. 

https://wwwn.cdc.gov/TSP/MMG/MMGDetails.aspx?mmgid=278&toxid=51

PEL is OSHA’s “Permissible Exposure Limit”, and the “8-hour TWA” indicates this 1 part per million exposure limit is an average exposure level over an 8-hour work shift. Consider now five rail tank cars full of vinyl chloride derailing and breaking open. Being outside, it would be considered a well-ventilated area, but being heavier than the air around it, as the liquid vinyl chloride would evaporate, it would stay low to the ground and spread. According to U.S. regulation Title 49, Section 179.13, a rail tank car is limited to 34,500 gallons of liquid; therefore, five cars could contain as much as 172,500 gallons. That is a LOT of vinyl chloride and has the potential to disperse a lot of hazardous gas into the surrounding area. But….the EPA to the rescue!!!

The EPA was notified of the incident on February 3rd and had people on the scene by 2am Saturday, according to their own website (https://www.epa.gov/oh/east-palestine-ohio-train-derailment-emergency-response#Background). They immediately began monitoring the air quality and determined that it was “safe.” Despite finding toxic material in the water and surrounding soil, it was not until three days after the derailment that any action was taken. What was that action? Release the Kraken! Ok, that’s exaggeration. That actual action was to drain this disastrous chemical from the cars and to execute a controlled burn. Safe and effective™! That’s right - the EPA decided it best to release a hazardous chemical from the damaged tanks in which it was stored, and rather than recapture that chemical as it was drained, to burn it. Wait. It’s unsafe to use a gas stove that burns clean, natural gas, but it’s safe to torch toxic petrochemicals? Yes! Safe and effective™!

This decision was reached much like the decisions made by the CDC to mitigate COVID-19. With COVID-19, we were presented the choice of shutdown or face millions of deaths (don’t listen to those conspiracy theories that say the shutdowns caused as many deaths as, or more than, the virus, or that the subsequent rollout of the shots has resulted in further injury and death). In the case of the train, two options - only two options - were presented: initiate a controlled burn to eliminate the evil elements, or later deal with a disastrous self-detonation. Were there not other possibilities? Could tanker trucks not be brought in and the payload be transferred from the damaged rail cars to the trucks for transport to a safe location?

Aside from wondering what other potential solutions may have been available, my first question is, what business is this of the federal government’s anyway? Norfolk Southern, the rail company whose train left its tracks on that fateful day, is a publicly-traded company - it is not a nationalized entity as it might otherwise be in a socialist country. Ohio is a sovereign state (as is each state in the union). The federal government has no place in this scenario and no Constitutional grant of authority to instigate its involvement. Yet here comes the EPA to take care of things, just like the CDC (also lacking any Constitutional charter or authority) jumped in to protect our health by locking everyone up until consenting to serve as guinea pigs in the largest compulsory human pharmaceutical trial in history. But it was safe and effective™!

Vinyl chloride is hazardous enough in its liquid or gaseous state; when set ablaze, it converts to other catastrophic contaminants. The same document from PubChem that informs us of the nature and many hazards of vinyl chloride itself also explains what happens when someone decides to play with matches in its presence:

Vinyl Chloride is a chlorinated hydrocarbon occurring as a colorless, highly flammable gas with a mild, sweet odor that may emit toxic fumes of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen chloride and phosgene when heated to decomposition.

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Vinyl-Chloride

So, now we have a government agency taking one noxious element and turning it into multiple pernicious poisons. Let’s set aside all the outcry we’ve suffered over the past several years because, they claim, carbon dioxide is clobbering the climate. In higher concentrations, carbon monoxide kills. At less deadly levels, it can cause “headache, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, blurred vision, confusion, chest pain, weakness, heart failure, difficulty breathing, seizures and coma.” Contact with or inhalation of hydrogen chloride can cause irritation. According to the CDC: 

Exposure to higher levels can result in rapid breathing, narrowing of the bronchioles, blue coloring of the skin, accumulation of fluid in the lungs, and even death. Exposure to even higher levels can cause swelling and spasm of the throat and suffocation. Some people may develop an inflammatory reaction to hydrogen chloride. This condition is called reactive airways dysfunction syndrome (RADS), a type of asthma caused by some irritating or corrosive substances.

https://wwwn.cdc.gov/TSP/ToxFAQs/ToxFAQsDetails.aspx?faqid=759&toxid=147

Also according to the CDC, hydrogen chloride can quickly convert to hydrochloric acid upon contact with water. One more visit to the CDC website tells us that:

Phosgene can be harmful if you breathe it. Exposure to low levels can cause eye and throat irritation making you to cough or wheeze. Higher levels of phosgene gas can cause your lungs to swell, making it difficult to breathe. This can happen quickly or might not be noticed until the next day. Even higher levels can result in severe damage to your lungs that might lead to death.

https://wwwn.cdc.gov/TSP/ToxFAQs/ToxFAQsDetails.aspx?faqid=1479&toxid=182

Yet through the smoke, the EPA’s claims of safe and effective™ continue to emanate. Throughout the conflagration, the EPA recognized no danger with the rising plume of dark smoke and its spread across a large portion of the northeastern seaboard. Never mind that water samples from other places, such as Hamburg, NY were showing levels of total dissolved solids in snow far beyond safe consumable levels:

Meter measuring total dissolved solids at 904ppm in melted snow - Hamburg, NY

While the EPA claimed the burn was an effective method to eliminate the chemical contaminant and prevent it combusting on its own, even The Washington Post, a paper that fully supported the CDC and FDA in their push of the poison poke as safe and effective™, couldn’t support the EPA’s position:

Exposure to the chemicals can cause various symptoms, such as ear, eye and throat irritation or dizziness, nausea and headache. Vinyl chloride is a carcinogen; phosgene is a highly toxic gas; butyl acrylate produces poisonous gases when burned; ethyl hexyl acrylate and ethylene glycol monobutyl ether are irritants.

“I wouldn’t want to be exposed to any of them in significant amounts,” Erik D. Olson said in an email. Olson is a senior strategic director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group. “They all pose hazards if inhaled.”

Though the fire and chemical release initially created air pollution, EPA and state investigators now must determine how much contamination got into the ground and whether it will leach into drinking water, contaminate soil and have other dangerous effects over time.

“It is unclear how much of this volatile chemical escaped into the air or burned before entering surface waters and soil, but vinyl chloride is highly mobile in soils and water and can persist for years in groundwater," said Cornell University soil and crop scientist Murray McBride, recommending that farmers test wells and surface soils in the months to come.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/02/15/ohio-train-derailment-toxic-chemicals/

The CDC and FDA had plenty of publications and press personalities to run cover for their safe and effective™ campaign. The EPA’s narrative, however, is falling apart. Even without the news finally telling the truth about this Ohio tragedy (they still won’t admit the dangers of the COVID-19 concoctions - according to the CDC and media, the shots are still safe and effective™), there are other tells. For instance, it was recently publicized that the water used to put out the blaze would be shipped to Texas for decontamination, because there are few places capable of handling such hazardous materials:

The water used to put out a massive railcar fire in East Palestine, Ohio, is headed to Texas for safe disposal, the City of Deer Park confirmed to KHOU 11.

About 50 train cars derailed on Feb. 3, sparking a fire that lasted several days. Some of those cars were carrying hazardous chemicals. Crews collected as much of the firefighting water used as possible to prevent environmental contamination.

That water is being sent to a company called Texas Molecular, which is permitted to properly dispose of hazardous materials, Deer Park officials confirmed to KHOU 11 on Wednesday.

https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/east-palestine-ohio-train-derailment-water-deer-park-texas/285-382ff001-a946-46a2-bcdf-e8388ef98de4

But…but…the EPA said it was safe! That’s why they brought residents back to the area so quickly. How safe can it be if the water from quenching the flames requires specialized disposal by a certified company? Though the EPA did admit minor contaminants in the soil and a couple of streams, they never admitted levels of toxicity in the air or the fallout from the fire. How much could have been avoided if local emergency responders, with hopefully more experience, had opportunity to present alternative courses of action? Perhaps ones that truly would have been safe and effective™?

If all this wasn’t bad enough, people were railing that the federal government was not doing enough. Neither Secretary of Transportation Buttigieg - who, despite holding the SoT position for two years, blamed president Trump for the disaster - nor the President had been on-site to assess the situation. FEMA was refusing assistance. It should be noted, as already stated, the federal government has no Constitutional franchise to be involved nor to offer aid, but it has become customary for the President to visit the site of a disaster. Yet neither official cared to travel to the site until Orange Man Bad announced a scheduled visit.

That situations like this arise are not surprising. There are, according to statistics, at least 1000 train derailments annually. Much of this is eerily reminiscent of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. As Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” The government, especially the federal government, will always be inefficient and ineffective in dealing with situations like this. We must, therefore, work to get and keep the federal government out of circumstances in which it does not belong. Unless we do, millions of lives will continue be sacrificed as the government bureaucracy continues to use their safe and effective™ playbook.