This is precisely the kind of decontextualized data that leads to inaccurate conclusions. Without data on normal animal die-off rates, there's no reason to believe finding dead animals is unusual in this part of town.
And of course people feel sick; they've been told they were exposed to a scary chemical. It's going to be very hard to separate psychosomatic effect from physiological effect.
(The dead fish are probably directly causal. Swimming in hydrochloric acid will do that. But they can also directly sample the water to figure out if the HCL levels are dangerous for human consumption or contact, and I've seen no reporting to suggest that is the case; fish are way more sensitive to water quality than humans).
> The correct thing to do is not dismiss concerns, but to put in place measures to stop corner-cutting
No argument there. Independent of this specific accident, we know there's a pattern of accident rate increase that indicates a culture of lax safety standsrds (and I completely believe the rail workers who have told us they are heavily incentivized to cut those corners). That should stop.
> and provide guidance to residents of East Palestine that isn't just "don't worry about it".
Unfortunately, that is the only guidance in the absence of other data. Otherwise, proving "everything is fine" is proving a negative. Is the question "is their risk higher than last month?" Yes. "How much higher?" Pretty much not very much if they didn't get sick by now. "What should we do?" They're doing it in the form of burning off the carcinogen and checking low-lying areas for any escaped volatiles.
What else is there? For an average citizen, they may as well go pray to whatever god they believe in; it's as useful a preventative as anything else they could do.
But they have not yet done this, and tests are a week out. FEMA hasn't provided food or resources to residents of East Palestine. Churches in Youngstown are traveling en masse to provide any kind of support. There's videos of entire coops of chickens dying out. But oh, this is all just a misunderstanding? Sorry, but are you f***ing kidding me? When are you gonna start looking with your eyes rather than listening to what people with clear conflicts-of-interest are telling you? I bet you thought there was nothing to be done about Uvalde too, huh?
There is currently a rampant bird flu ripping through the US shared between wildlife and farm chickens with a 90%-100% mortality over 48 hours. This is exactly the kind of situation human threat-assessment is bad at.
I know experts make mistakes, but replacing expert wisdom with "the guesses of the masses" is a bad idea in general. I don't trust Norfolk Southern, but I trust a mob a darn sight less.
This is where you're wrong. Experts don't make mistakes in situations like this. They consistently [0] downplay [1] every [2] environmental [3] disaster [4] and withhold information from neutral parties until it loses the public's attention. When are we going to stop acting like this isn't standard operating procedure? When are we going to assume that this is default behavior of people responsible for disasters?
[0] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-toxic-cover-up/
[1] - https://www.history.com/news/chernobyl-disaster-coverup
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-rig-leak-idUSTRE6430A...
[3] - https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/flint-water-crisis/six-mor...
[4] - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/05/california-finds-pge-equipme...
"We don't really know" is simply false. This isn't a mystery chemical; we've been working with the stuff since 1835, we've spilled it into the environment numerous times, and we are decently familiar with it enough that even given experts with vested interests will downplay the risks, I have no reason to believe panic is in order. It's not safe to swim in, I wouldn't spread it on toast, but it's a well-known HAZMAT story with a well-understood mitigation.
While NPR reported there were concerns from citizens, they also went looking for people who would provide causes for concern in their reporting and found none: not only from the rail company (where you wouldn't expect to find them), but from anywhere. The largest concerns expressed were from an OSU professor that said to wash surfaces and look out for low-lying areas. Plenty of chemical experts would have plenty to gain contradicting the party line if the party line were untrue; the fact we don't see them really should indicate in this case that there's (no pun intended) no fire here.
What is your goal in this exchange?
> It has never been burned at anywhere near this quantity
I'm curious your source for that assertion.
https://www.csb.gov/formosa-plastics-vinyl-chloride-explosio...
Either way, boring. Move on elsewhere. Maybe Reddit will be more susceptible to your lying rhetoric.
In past events, vinyl chloride was not burned, and minimal amounts of it went unrecovered. We also know that hydrogen chloride is a byproduct of burning vinyl chloride, and when combined with water, makes hydrochloric acid, which is not good to come into contact with, and has killed many of the fish in East Palestine. We know vinyl chloride is a cancer-and-birth-defect-causing carcinogen. We also have seen some evidence that animals nearby are dropping dead and humans feeling sick.
We also know that the rail company, purposefully or not, did not accurately tell officials which chemicals were released. We also know in the past that corporations responsible for ecological disasters have repeatedly downplayed the incidents.
We also know that rail union leaders were talking about the exact safety concerns that led to this derailment, and were told to suck it up by strikebreaking federal officials.
The correct thing to do is not dismiss concerns, but to put in place measures to stop corner-cutting and provide guidance to residents of East Palestine that isn't just "don't worry about it". There are real concerns here and no one is providing real evidence that things are safe.