Here are some new claims that have emerged in the wake of the so-called “controlled burn” of five tank car loads of vinyl chloride involved in the Norfolk Southern wreck in East Palestine earlier this year. This information is based on two news reports which I have included here as links. I make no claims as to its truthfulness or accuracy of this information:
There was some temperature increase of one of the carloads that was measured, but there never was any “polymerization” occurring in that load.
There never was any risk of polymerization in any of the five carloads because polymerization required the addition of another organic chemical needed to activate a polymerization process. Without that key chemical, no amount of heating of
Someone is not only lacking in knowledge or organic chemistry, but is too lazy to look up basic industry references.
Vinyl chloride will suffer ‘runaway’ polymerization if excessively heated under pressure – the polymerization is exothermic; how do they explain the autogenous temperature rise in a sealed car otherwise?
We have noted the seeming idiocy of breaching the other four cars simultaneously, especially since it did not seem all five cars were close enough together that an overpressure breach of the ‘runaway’ car would breach or damage all four others. I continue to await definitive reporting on the locations of the cars and their ‘surroundings’. I am also still awaiting the name(s) of whoever directly ordered the breach and controlled ignition – you will recall that the official description of what was going to happen (‘bright’ and ‘loud’, etc.) came several hours after the wreck, and as I recall after the NS wreck master was threatened with arrest when he attempted to act as incident commander.
I am only paraphrasing to report the claims being made in the two links. In those news reports, there are further claims that I have not mentioned. One of those states why there was a last minute change of plans to burn all five cars rather than just the one that was thought to be overheating due to polymerization.
Apparently all or part of this new information comes from a recent NTSB hearing on the derailment. In my opinion, the second news link could have been a lot clearer as to who was sayi
Note the very small effective concentration of phenolic and the extended stabilization time even in the presence of some atmospheric oxygen and moisture. But also note the point about not impeding polymerization in process without removing the stabilizer (e.g. via caustic reaction and/or distillation).
The core issue in East Palestine and the greater region of Ohio and Pennsylvania is the degree and effect of residents’ exposure to vinyl chloride due to the open burn of five tank car loads of the chemical for the purpose of disposing of it. As I understand the safety data for this chemical, there is no safe threshold of human exposure to this chemical. However, the situation is hard to diagnose because most of the dangerous health effects develop over time, so we don’t have a clear answer to what effects will develop. This uncertainty hangs over the town and its residents.
I understand that the chemical has an odor, and if one detects that odor, it means that they are inhaling the chemical. Any degree of inhaling the chemical is officially forbidden during the handling and use of this chemical. Not one molecule of Vinyl Chloride may be safely ingested. And the known health effects include several life threatening diseases, which is well documented and warned about in the safety literature for this chemical. So any skin contact or inhalation of this chemical is not allowed to happen during the handling and use of the chemical.
And yet, in the town, at the wreck site, there were five tank car loads of this chemical released into open pits and set ablaze for the p
At the time, to someone, burning it off seemed to be the right answer. That the collective memory no longer recalls the why does seem to indicate that maybe those same folks now realize it wasn’t the answer.
Kinda like people who throw water on burning oil on their stove.
There are landfills and bodies of water all over the country where “out of sight, out of mind” was the once word of the day. And all over the country, there are Superfund sites and brownfields as a result.
Here are some things to ponder that I couldn’t post last night.
Keep in mind that ‘stabilizers’ for vinyl chloride monomer are different chemicals, I won’t say ‘radically’ different because you’ll complain, from stabilizers for polyvinyl chloride plastic. The former is what is concerned here, and what the patent covered. Until a report describes precisely what was used in the five cars, and what its concentration may have been, it would be premature at best to try claiming that “the vinyl chloride wouldn’t polymerize”. You may note in the patent that part of the stabilization that would apply – effectively, if the times given were accurate – to normal transit conditions does not impair subsequent polymerization to much more degree than for untreated vinyl chloride; it does not require either distillation or washing with caustic to allow controlled and intended polymerization.
You will also note the reaction conditions given. They are in degrees K, which means you subtract ~273 to get degrees C. Note the critical pressure required to ‘keep the vinyl chloride liquid’ at this range of temperature.
Now go back to the problem with the one tank car that was said to be suffering a pressure excursion in part because its relief valving had been damaged. The pressure would have eventually broken out a rupture disk in the tank-car structure – again, the report will contain the location of the likeliest overpressure protection, its orientation after the wreck, and the dimensions of the opening that would have been opened (quickly and irrevocably) should the disk separate.
The temperature of the vinyl chloride corresponding to that rupture pressure would be easily determined by anyone with access to chemical references on vinyl chloride. The stabilizer would do little if anything to affect the relationship of pressure and temperature in the monomer.
The purpose of the burn was so that people wouldn’t be exposed to vinyl chloride. In addition to reducing the chance of explosion, burning it would convert it into other products (HCl, phosgene) while also bad, but at least combustion heats the products causing them to rise into the atmosphere and disperse to a lower concentration. Vinyl chloride is a heaver-than-air gas that could have been a disaster if it escaped unburned.
That is definitely the consensus view of the group of officials that decided on the burn-off. But the manufacturer of the vinyl chloride and the EPA disagree with that consensus conclusion.
The manufacturer of the vinyl chloride disagreed and told them there was no chance of polymerization and no indication of a pressure rise trend. The NTSB provided the temperature logs that showed no rising trend.
Was there any consultation with a contractor who could come on site and offer to off-load the product and remove it from the site in an orderly and safe man
Euclid, I agree there was panic forcing unwise decisions, but who is to say that you or I, even with the best training, would not have made the same very-rash decisions.
And pointing the finger at whose panic it was, does not seem to me to be particularly useful
Important to learn the lessons for the future, get to the manufacturer FAST. And Hazmat Transportationb must always have that ability.
And what is the situation with the people of East Palestine now?
But… it wasn’t a “rush” to plan the burnoff; it was advertised to the community long before the actual event. Part of what I expect to be documented in the report is where that “13 minutes” came from, what the actual methodology of determining temperature rise was, and who was involved in the decision-making at that point.
My opinion at this point, based only on the information provided up to this point, is that someone ‘other than Norfolk Southern employees’ was responsible for the planning, for taking all five cars of vinyl chloride simultaneously, and for the choice of inducing what was basically a BLEVE not only in the overpressured car, but the other four presumably cold ones – accounting for the comparatively great amount of unreacted vinyl chloride that showed up in the streams.
And that a great deal of manipulation is beginning to take place to shuck responsibility for that, and to pass it onto Norfolk Southern for… reasons other than objective fact.
It may transpire that Norfolk Southern originally requested that prompt action be taken to facilitate opening the line to traffic at the earliest possible time. It seems to me that exploding multiple cars of vinyl-chloride monomer in 20-degree weather would not possibly facilitate that, and even a cursory reference to publically-accessible industry information would surely back that up. In any case we shouldn’t overlook that Norfolk Southern was taken out of the chain of incident command, under duress, hours before the decision was taken to do the burn. I presume the cars were placarded, and that first responders understood how to look up and read the reference in the Orange Book [and, as Tree reminded me, call CHEMTREC]. It will be interesting to read the
That’s not the takeaway lesson here. Any more than it was for Lac Megantic, where a five-minute call to Randy or anyone else in the shops would have definitively plugged many of the necessary holes in the cheese.
We already have mandatory placarding, and recording of the placard information in the train consist, and a published reference to quickly consult how to handle the associated hazardous material. What is ‘necessary’ is to ensure first that the Orange Book reference corresponding to a load is clear, concise, and up-to-date regarding how to react in what may be different circumstances, and second that if there is any uncertainty about how to proceed on the information given, THEN clear and 24/7 access to manufacturer, shipper, or appropriate clearinghouse be provided in the Book itself (if not, indeed, in the consist information being tracked by the railroad(s) involved).
Three lines covering stabilizers and initiators would likely have prevented the issue here. Even if the specific materials are trade secrets, that has never been a ‘bar’ to compiling very precise technical information on how to dose and use proprietary chemicals with coded names. (Technical formularies are infuriatingly full of that sort of thing…)
That’s really the criterion for assessing the accident response and aftermath. By extension, that applies to everyone else (in Ohio or elsewhere) subjected to the atmospheric or hydrological plume.
Of course East Palestine now has to wait for the “next” NS incident on the rebuilt line. With all the pile-on sources eager to point out how incompetent/heartless/mercenary/etc. Norfolk Southern and its doxxable management are. If, as I suspect, there is political expediency or CYA involved, this ill-serves the victim communities.
The number for CHEMTREC ((800) 262-8200) is in the orange book, and on every MSDS.
They have at their fingertips virtually all the information responders need when dealing with a hazmat incident. Including the manufacturer, particularly in the case of car loads - which is one reason the car number is also painted on the top of tank cars.
Why should we trust this manufacturer of Vinyl Chloride? IMO it is in their best interest to make these claims. They may be true or not. Only a very independent labatory can study a precise reaction of the VC under labatory conditions. My orange book is not up to date. Is VC only under one plackard or is it divided into sections depending on how each load’s chemistry is in the load.
Presumably they know how to spell it. In as much as the manufacturer is handling it daily in their manufacturing processes - they either know how to handle it or their employees are dying in droves.
They had hours to assess this situation, including the time between their press release describing the effects of the burn and the actual breach and burn. To claim that this didn’t leave time to pull up the Orange Book and then dial the CHEMTREC number if the Book didn’t give satisfaction is at best ingenuous.
Remember that the official pravda is now that nobody would have advised, authorized, or condoned the ‘controlled burn’. So there had to be a great deal of protracted running in circles, screaming and shouting for hours, leaving enough attention free to threaten NS personnel with arrest, without anyone actually finding the (now supposedly self-evident) references that established hazmat response procedure would have located within minutes… asynchronously with any on-site proceedings requiring foreground attention.
I’m all for giving emergency responders the benefit of a doubt… but the cumulative research and actions taken here only involve excuses, and demonstrably poor ones.