and anything with chlorine in it cannot be innocuous.

Such as NaCl, common table salt? Chlorine gets a bad rap and as an element is very nasty stuff. Not always so nasty when chemically bonded.

 

Such as NaCl, common table salt? Chlorine gets a bad rap and as an element is very nasty stuff. Not always so nasty when chemically bonded.

got me there ...

 

Most things with a carbon-chlorine bond are not good for health.
Phosgene
Methylene chloride (dichloromethane)
Chloroform
Carbon tetrachloride
Vinyl chloride
Tetrachloroethylene

those are the compounds with only one and two carbon atoms. There are other with more carbon atoms and chlorine bonded to the carbon. In the pharmaceutical and agro chemical research labs, chlorine containing molecules are casually known as "liquid death".
Chlorine-carbon bonds are known in the pharma industry but in certain goals...
chloramphenicol, chloroquine, chlorambucil, used for their antibiotic, anticancer, and antimalarial properties respectively - see the trend?

the key to PVC, is the high molecular weight. It is just too large of a molecule to be metabolized if it is ingested. However, not all of the monomers/oligomers are removed in all "vinyl" produces and that is part of their characteristic odor. That and the high amount of plasticizers needed to make it flexible.

 

The 2023 Ohio train derailment occurred on February 3, 2023, at 8:55 p.m. EST, when 38 cars of a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, United States.

Today is February 25th and while I can't speak for the rest of the country it remains in the morning and evening news with more and more being found out. My only connection to East Palestine, Ohio is our daughter-in-law grew up there and as a kid played along those tracks. She still has family, including grandma living in the area where the derailment happened. Here we are about 3 weeks following the train wreck and it remains at the top of the morning and evening news here in the Cleveland, Ohio suburbs.

The very first post in this thread made reference to the Love Canal and while the love canal took decades to become the nightmare it is this trainwreck only took days to become a nightmare. Actually I figure, and just my thinking, the beginning of a nightmare. The true effects will be unfolding for years. Hopefully they won't pave it over and build an elementary school on the site.

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y.--Twenty five years after the Hooker Chemical Company stopped using the Love Canal here as an industrial dump, 82 different compounds, 11 of them suspected carcinogens, have been percolating upward through the soil, their drum containers rotting and leaching their contents into the backyards and basements of 100 homes and a public school built on the banks of the canal.

People just watched their property values plummet. Who wants to buy property where there was a toxic spill? Norfolk and Southern should be forced to buy every square mile at the "before" market value plus an added 25%. This is not the first train derailment disaster. Actually something like 1500 to 1700 trains derail every year in the US, most just don't make headlines like this one did. Train derailments in the Pacific NW have destroyed watersheds and wildlife in the past. While the cause of this one seems pretty much known the list of general causes is dozens of reasons a train comes off the tracks. Yet, as they say and it's true, America's needs move by train and truck. Impose more federal regulation on either and like higher fuel cost the increase cost of moving something from point A to point B will eventually be paid by the consumer.

Anyway I doubt the damage done, the real damage done, will be known for years much like other environmental disasters.

We just had a metals plant have a major explosion a few miles down the road. A metals plant with a history of OSHA violations. Just maybe if unfettered by politics the NTSB and OSHA were allowed to do their jobs we would not have many of the problems we see today.

Just My Take
Ron

 

Norfolk and Southern should be forced to buy every square mile at the "before" market value plus an added 25%.

Are you serious? That could be up to a billion dollars! If they spent a billion dollars on buying East Palestine property and relocating people, they'll be a billion dollars short on their share buyback program.

 

Are you serious? That could be up to a billion dollars! If they spent a billion dollars on buying East Palestine property and relocating people, they'll be a billion dollars short on their share buyback program.

Yep, how about that. Just maybe with their demise others will get a clue.

Ron

 

This is a chemical that boils @ 7.9°F and has a water solubility of 0.7%. It is being burned off instead of becoming an airborne gas. I do believe this is being greatly overblown. The hazard scale goes from 0-9 and this monomer of vinyl chloride is:

Not exactly water which is 0 but not the worst thing being shipped by rail. If exposed to the liquid, the skin freezes due to rapid evaporation. Once evaporated, it rapidly breaks down in the atmosphere with a half-life of 23 hours. The Monomer Vinyl Chloride MSDS can be found Safety-Data-Vinyl-Chloride-Monomer.pdf (shintech.com)

 

ATLANTA - Mar 29, 2022

Norfolk Southern Corporation (NYSE: NSC) today announced that its Board of Directors has authorized a new program for the repurchase of up to $10 billion of its common stock beginning April 1, 2022. The company’s current program will be terminated on March 31, 2022.

and they were hoping to buy back another $10B in 2023.

 

This is a chemical that boils @ 7.9°F and has a water solubility of 0.7%. It is being burned off instead of becoming an airborne gas. I do believe this is being greatly overblown. The hazard scale goes from 0-9 and this monomer of vinyl chloride is:
View attachment 288383
Not exactly water which is 0 but not the worst thing being shipped by rail. If exposed to the liquid, the skin freezes due to rapid evaporation. Once evaporated, it rapidly breaks down in the atmosphere with a half-life of 23 hours. The Monomer Vinyl Chloride MSDS can be found Safety-Data-Vinyl-Chloride-Monomer.pdf (shintech.com)

oh, and if they just vented without burning, it would have asphyxiated the town because, according to the safety data sheet, it is twice as dense as air. Water is not good when fighting fires, it is completely insolvable with water and you just push the liquid down the stream. It has an extremely high heat of vaporization so, even with a 7.9°F boiling point, it tends to hang around for a while as a liquid as it cools the rest of the liquid as the top surface evaporates.
Read the whole datasheet.
You'll see the warning against dumping into ground or soil - and the "trace amounts of phosgene" produced as a combustion product. Phosgene is deadly (hours to weeks after a single trace exposure) - it's just sad that they don't define "trace" so I don't have to either but you can look it up.

 

Also, there are only about 2,000 homes and apartment units (total) in East Palestine, OH with an average market value of only $100,000 as of January, 2023. Total value of only $200M. Add in the value of businesses and I'm pretty sure NS could buy out the town for only $400M. Cleaning will me much more than that - and should also be done. But cleaning the soot out of houses, sofa cushions, sidewalk cracks will never be complete enough and long term medical liability will be much more than $400M.

as of now, other high schools don't want to play in East Palestine and nobody wants to shop there or buy a home there.

 

and they were hoping to buy back another $10B in 2023.

Wishing and hoping...

Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw

pledged Tuesday the freight railroad will spend $6.5 million to help those affected by the release of toxic chemicals from its derailment nearly three weeks ago in East Palestine, Ohio. But in a plan released earlier this year, the company said it’s planning to spend more than a thousand times that amount — $7.5 billion — to repurchase its own shares in order to benefit its shareholders.

The company spent $3.4 billion on share repurchases last year, and $3.1 billion in 2021, bringing its recent share repurchases to $6.5 billion. That towers over what it said is its financial commitment to East Palestine, which it said exceeds $6.4 million in direct aid to families and government agencies, in addition to what will be required in cleanup costs.

There is no estimate as to the total cost to Norfolk Southern from the derailment, including the cost of cleanup that the Environmental Protection Agency says will be the railroad’s responsibility.

Looking at the past 30 days many of their valued shareholders are bailing out. Feb 2nd Norfolk Southern was trading at $254.84. Friday it closed at $224.77 and that after a slight recovery. Actually after hours it lost $0.77 so right now $224.00.

Norfolk Southern has lost $6.7 billion in market cap since the Ohio train derailment, as its stock has lost more than those of its rivals

Not what investors want to see.

Ron

 

Not what investors want to see.

It's not what the investors who owned shares on Feb 1st wanted to see. It's the kind of thing some value investors DO wait to see. Once this event is paid off, they will be back to their money-printing cash-generating business with limited competition along the tracks they own.

 

It's not what the investors who owned shares on Fed 1st wanted to see. It's the kind of thing some value investors DO wait to see. Once this event is paid off, they will be back to their money-printing cash-generating business with limited competition along the tracks they own.

Pretty much covers it.

Ron

 

That is not supported by its MSDS... i.e. it's material safety data sheet. Has anyone taken the time to even read it? https://fscimage.fishersci.com/msds/76785.htm#:~:text=MSDS Name%3APoly%28vinyl chloride%29%2C high molecular weight , Chlorethylene polymer%3B Vinyl chloride polymer%3B Poly%28chlorethylene%29

i did and that is not MSDS for vinyl chloride... that is for POLY vinyl chloride which is a very different and much less hazardous product.
here is MSDS for Vinyl chloride. and feel free to check page 4
https://www.airgas.com/msds/001067.pdf

also MSDS explicitly states to avoid any release into environment, specially waterways.
and it is highly flammable. not sure i understand the reasoning behind setting something highly flammable on fire ("as a measure of precaution"). how does one do a controlled burn of a giant tank of toxic fuel?

 

While I totally agree that an updated brake system could help in instances would it really detect a seized bearing?

Like I said earlier, the electronic braking was only part of the regulations that got canceled. Every so often along the tracks they have sensors the detect overheated wheel journals. Part of the update was to put those sensors closer together. From what was said locally on the news they were alerted about the problem by one of those sensors, but because of the disabling of the brake system behind the point in the car string no longer working, they couldn't get stopped before the derailment.

My wife lives in an old farmhouse that is about 50 or so feet from the same set of tracks that goes through East Palestine, so it could have happened there. The trains going by my wife's house are much longer than even a few years ago, they now have two or more engines at the front of a string, then another one or two in the middle and sometimes even one or two in the rear. Going at ~45MPH it takes a long time to stop.

 

If you doubters think the spill is over blown and not dangerous, why are states that have in them places that reclaim soil and water from toxic spills refusing to take it from East Palestine? https://www.axios.com/2023/02/25/east-palestine-train-derailment-michigan-texas There are more reports but that one seemed to be the less political one.

 

Highly volatile chemicals tend to adsorb onto soil surfaces - just like they do into activated carbon. Then they slowly release for weeks, months or years and keep an odd odor in the area. There is a golf course in Wyandotte Michigan - built on an old chemical manufacturing site that has a solvent smell when the winds are low.
The vinyl chloride monomer may be quite easily evaporated but the Oli Gompers that grew while the railcar warmed up may be 4, 6, 8 or 10 or more carbon atoms and no longer super mobile - but enough to cause a stink for a long time.

 

Like I said earlier, the electronic braking was only part of the regulations that got canceled.

I apologize... I missed that part. It just seems so often things like this get turned into a political issue and it gets real old fast. There are ways around the President to get things done. More track side sensors would be a big help.

I also know at least 10% of the ABS lights on the side of semi trailers aren't on becuase they were disconnected by a driver not wanting to draw DOT attention and not reported which made me think if there were improved systems if anyone would actually pay attention to them. In my experience 90% of the time the problem was due to corrosion in the connection between the tractor and trailer, or a weak connection in the cord and not with the ABS itself.

I looked up how train brakes worked so see if I could find similarities between them and the truck and trailer brakes I know like the back of my hand. They are similar, but not the same. I would like to know what exactly happened that prevented the cars from working correctly.

Hopefully train crews have a little better training and would take error lights, messages, or whatever else a little more seriously, but this day and age I really doubt it. Track side devices would at least get more people involved hopefully.

 

Here's the most thorough explanation yet for the train derailment in East Palestine

OK while I do not work for the NTSB I do watch Air Disasters on TV. That derailment was in the making for miles and miles before it happened. By the time a hot box was detected it was too late.

The first detector recorded a temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit above the ambient temperature, the report said.
By the time the train reached the second detector 11 miles later, the bearing had reached 103 degrees above the ambient temperature.
The third and final detector, located 19 miles later just east of East Palestine, recorded such a high temperature — 253 degrees Fahrenheit above ambient temperature — that the train's crew was alerted to stop the train and inspect the bearing in accordance with Norfolk Southern safety guidelines, the NTSB report said.

With the sensors spaced as they were and with a train like Norfolk Southern train 32N, a 149-car, 9,000-foot-long train traveling east along the railroad's Fort Wayne Line across Ohio, The train was traveling just below the 50 MPH limit at 47 MPH. No clue what it takes to stop a train like this as to distance.

Ron

 

I looked up how train brakes worked so see if I could find similarities between them and the truck and trailer brakes I know like the back of my hand. They are similar, but not the same. I would like to know what exactly happened that prevented the cars from working correctly.

Just my guess from looking at rail cars on a siding near my wife's house. The pressurized air comes from the engine, each car has both metal lines and rubber brake lines. The rubber ones are near the couplers on the end of the cars. If there would be enough heat from a wheel fire, the rubber lines would start to leak. Even though the rubber lines have a steel braid they still have a rubber inner and outer cover that can get compromised and the steel braid won't hold air.

The siding I was talking bout is one they use mostly for repairing cars. There is always a few rubber brake lines laying around. Most of them only have a very small hole in them, and that was enough to get the replaced. Now think about one of them burned badly.