I think it’s so obnoxious how Donald Trump and others are making such a big deal about the chemical spill in East Palatine. Toxic chemicals are everywhere in the modern world, they’re dumped, flared, burned and released into the air constantly mostly in a lawful fashion.

One shot spills of toxic chemicals pose some immediate risk and the accute and immediate risks are real. That’s why they have emergency procedures, take safe guards for workers and those in immediate risk of accute exposure. But the globe is a big place, pollution quickly dilutes and falls back to background levels fairly quickly.

Scare mongering does nobody any good and it harms public health – both psychologically for those who live nearby causing placebo effects and making people will themselves into sickness. When you are looking for a monster in every shadow you are likely to find one. Whether it’s caused by a one shot toxic release is much harder to prove.

The politicians will talk about doing something to make trains safer when hauling toxic loads, in hope that wins over some voters by doing something, probably meaningless. But it will create good jobs for the bureaucrats and the paper pushers and those that make random safety components that are unlikely to stop the next toxic disaster.

You make toxic chemicals you’re going to spill them. No safety system is 100%, machinery and the human operators often fail in complicated and unpredictable ways. You can be careful and be heavily regulated but systems always fail given enough time. You want to avoid the next spill you got to stop making the precursors to dangerous chemistries.

People reacted so negatively when I pointed out on Facebook a while that any one year is meaningless, some are good some bad. But decades are much more meaningful and accumulated actions matter much more than one off. A single chemical spill but over time toxic emissions from factories are a far bigger concern. Regulated emissions.

Fear should never drive public policy. Rational thought, considering cumulative effects should decide what is right or wrong. If statistics show a lot of toxic chemicals are being released into the atmosphere causing harm then you should act. Otherwise, it’s just a meaningless one off.