by Karl Denninger, Market Ticker:
There’s plenty of nutballs all over the media and Internet or, if you prefer, the blind squirrel thing is real.
I know more than a little bit about chemistry and I know where to look for those things I don’t know, and understand the background enough to be able to read things (like the Henry’s law constant) and figure out what I’m looking at.
As we all know there was a very significant vinyl chloride spill recently as a result of stupidity (yep) in Eastern Ohio. The Governor has raised hell about the material going through “his” state without notice, but the facts of the matter are that this material is utterly essential to many things in our modern life which we all take for granted.
Specifically, it is the precursor for both PVC pipe and most common wire insulation these days; I presume you’d like to be able to wire a house or pipe water and waste around. In particular PVC waste pipes are the standard for such use and your house (assuming it was built after the older cast iron went away) is full of the stuff, never mind all the electrical wiring in, well, everything.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
So calls to get rid of it out of transportation corridors are stupid — unless you’d like to crap in the street again, of course, and go back to a world without electrical power, lights and appliances.
Didn’t think so.
So what’s the deal about the substance itself.
Well, its a gas normally, and a nasty one. It is particularly nasty because (1) it is toxic, (2) the toxic level is well below what you detect by smell (thus by the time you smell it you’re being actively poisoned, by quite a bit) and (3) its also explosively flammable and heavier than air, so it will travel along the ground and, if it finds an ignition source….. boom.
It was that risk that led them to deliberately breach the tanks and, ultimately, burn it off.  Had the tanks ruptured explosively the rapid vapor expansion explosion that would have resulted could have easily leveled a decently-large area and thrown shrapnel for a mile — or more.  (Incidentally several news outlets said it could “detonate”; I’ve looked for evidence of it being able to be initiated and can’t find it. There is a very significant difference between an “explosion” and a “detonation”; the two are not the same thing.)
But — the material is both nearly insoluble in water and highly volatile. (It is soluble in most organic solvents but that’s not in play here.)
This means its quite-easy to separate out and since it doesn’t dissolve is easily liberated if in a mixture with water. Indeed even a minute of boiling water fairly-heavily contaminated with it evolves it out to undetectable levels in the water that remains.  Of course you’d be wise to run the exhaust fan while doing this, since you certainly don’t want to breathe it and, again, the toxic level is well below what you can detect by smell.
There are many people trying to claim that this derailment is the equivalent of Chernobyl in America. Nonsense. Chernobyl released long-persistence and soluble radioisotopes into the environment — things that have half-lives of anywhere from minutes (not a huge deal) to tens of thousands of years or more (a very big deal.) This stuff, while very nasty in the immediate sense is simply not long-persistence (unlike many chemical poisons such as dioxins) so while the acute and immediate danger is extremely severe the longer-term impact — years and decades down the road — is not.
We absolutely should do something to the people responsible, especially considering that there appears to be evidence that the train in question had a “hotbox” visible on surveillance for tens of miles before it derailed and thus had to pass at least one and likely two detectors — but was not stopped.  I want to know why that happened because someone either is negligent in their maintenance or worse, grossly-negligent in that they knew the train had an active hotbox and didn’t stop and correct the problem. Either way there certainly appears from my point of view to be enough liability to severely damage or even destroy Norfolk-Southern as a company, and if in fact people were acutely poisoned (likely) and wind up with cancer or dead as a consequence every single person involved must be tried and imprisoned for manslaughter or worse. No, being a “corporation” doesn’t and must not get you off from this; individuals made this decision, their chain of reporting is responsible for said supervision and failed to do so and every single one of them must be forced to discharge personal, criminal liability.
Incidentally, this isn’t the first — or even only recent — such event. Not at all. Shall we talk about the degradation of employing people entirely on the basis of merit? Or would you like this same sort of event to happen in your town?  Welcome to DIE, you know, the result of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity….
At the same time overselling the fear porn on this is beyond ridiculous and into the realm of stupid. I’ve watched several people destroy their credibility online and in the media over this incident. So be it; I’ve added several people to the “ignore” list for the future.
I am a part of team reality. That includes reality in both directions including when the fear isn’t what’s sold to the public via scaremongers trying to gin up clicks or other means of exploiting a “hide under the desk” sort of fear porn. This is a serious transportation accident with serious repercussions, including significant acute risks to those exposed at the time and, for those who were exposed, quite-possibly serious or even lethal (cancer) consequences but it is not a Chernobyl-style event in any way, shape or form.
Period.
