I was planning to cover WWI era chemical weapons eventually, I just didn’t expect the context would involve explaining a train crash in Ohio this month.
Today’s Moment of Science…Phosgene clouds o’er Ohio.
When the term ‘gaseous chemical weapons’ is being flung about, our minds typically veer towards one of three things: chlorine gas, mustard gas, or cabbage farts. One of the earliest chemical weapons deployed in WWI, chlorine gas could be deadly. But it took a pretty high concentration of the stuff to knock someone dead. Along with a visible cloud it produced a nasty odor that was detectable well below lethal levels, giving a soldier a lot of anxiety but ample time to prepare. A gas mask, or a wet rag if your great-great-grandpa was in a pinch, rendered the stuff merely annoying. On the other hand, the ability of mustard gas to make any moist areas of the body erupt in painful blisters indelibly scarred memories of the stuff into our minds, amongst other body parts. Given the lack of antibiotics at the time, these open blisters could become infected and fatalities occurred due to secondary infections.
But the monster responsible for approximately 85% of the chemical based fatalities of WWI was phosgene.
Phosgene can be lethal in just a minute or so with an exposure of 500ppm. Or 3ppm over the course of a few hours can do it. It’s a nasty beast that can leave someone feeling fine initially only to end up choking a day later. It can also cause problems due to chronic exposure. It’s been reported that by the time you smell it, it’s already too late. This isn’t entirely accurate. It’s concentrated enough to just catch a whiff of its freshly cut hay odor at 0.4ppm. While detecting the smell doesn’t necessarily spell death, it indicates a concentration at least four times higher than the threshold limit value, an acceptable daily limit (more or less) for a work shift.
So, that train crash in East Palestine, Ohio.
At this point, the cause of the accident is suspected to be a wheel bearing on one car that overheated. At least that’s the official cause. A former head of the Federal Railroad Administration, Sarah Feinberg, said she thought the trains were too long during her tenure less than a decade ago, and they were “only” 80-90 cars; the train involved in this crash had 150 cars. Additionally, a strategy called Precision Schedule Railroading, associated with smaller staffs and longer trains, was implemented by the company running this show off the rails back in 2019.
The fact that trains are far longer now and running with about ¼ less staff than before probably had nothing to do with Ohio’s poisonous smoke plume. Nope. Nuh-uh. Nothing.
There had reportedly been mechanical issues earlier in the route between IL and PA. Out of 150 cars making the haul, 38 derailed and another dozen were damaged in the fire caused by the derailment. Eleven cars were transporting aggressively hazardous shit. And this is where things go from bad to flaming turd fuck.
The train was transporting several chemicals, including ethylhexyl acrylate, butyl acrylate, isobutylene, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, and vinyl chloride. The car transporting isobutylene was unaffected, which is of very little reassurance given *gestures at everything*.
Vinyl chloride, a gas at room temperature, is used to make polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Most vinyl chloride made in the US is polymerized on-site. The 10% or so that’s processed after transport is shipped in liquid form with a layer of inert chemical security between the business and our lungs.
Vinyl chloride has enough nasty side effects on its own. It’s a carcinogen that causes a smattering of the super-annoying-even-for-cancer types of cancer. That’s without a train crash.
At first, the problem was merely that chemicals were leaking from the cars transporting them. Over the next few days, there became a risk of one of the chemical transport cars exploding and sending toxic shrapnel flying over a mile away. At which point, residents who hadn’t gotten the fuck out of town were asked if they would go literally anywhere else.
The choices were between shit and less shit options. In order to avoid what could have been an even bigger disaster, in a controlled release they lit all that vinyl chloride on fire. One of the products of fiery vinyl chloride soup (my band name)? Phosgene.
The chemicals were detected in nearby waterways and killed approximately 3,500 fish. Reports of dead chickens, burning eyes, and lingering odors persist, rattling locals. It’s been about two weeks since the crash, and residents were able to return home on the 8th. Continued monitoring of the air and water by the EPA suggests nothing remotely dangerous remains from the controlled burn, with nary a molecule of phosgene in sight. Plenty of folks don’t feel reassured about that.
As easy as it is to point to numbers on an EPA report and say ‘the town is safe now,’ I don’t have to drink the East Palestine water.
This has been your Moment of Science, concerned yet a little excited for the day we have weaponized cabbage farts.
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