Donald Trump Embraces the Radical Environmentalists 🌎
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.
2 Comments
Nah, got into reading your pages here and it’s a mixed bag, some good n bad. In this case, you’re ignoring that trains cut back on safety features (during Trump) because the CEO and his minions (them stock holders) got record profits from cuts to safety features that would have prevented the toxic crash. Still the chemicals can kill slowly etc things you don’t know about (increased cancers in rural areas are a fact).
Worried about bureaucracy? Hardly anything compared to the CEO salaries they don’t pay taxes on … and investors getting their money.
I usually prefer the DEC maps and we know DEC isn’t getting that much of the state budget.
I think I bought a map or two in the past from u. Enjoy your perspective and personality anyway. 😉
I think it’s better to follow the science, and not people’s emotions. While many times chemical companies and the government have been dishonest in the past, that’s also not always the case either. We can get all touchy-feely about one shot exposures to toxic chemicals, but with most of them it’s a matter of dose and length of time of exposure. I worked in the asbestos industry in college, I am well aware of how the wheeler-dealers of the trial lawyers combined with activists totally distorted people’s fears of asbestos. While chronic exposure is deadly, casual exposure in most cases is the normal in our lives, as is many other toxic chemicals.
If you don’t want people having things like PFOAs or PCBs in their bodies, it’s kind of late to stop it once it’s in production and in the environment, you just have to stop producing more of the harmful chemicals.
Ending production is where toxic chemicals stop, not by scolding people on their proper use and disposal. At that point, it’ s too late except maybe to minimize the most significant doses of the chemical. It’s out there, it’s not going away. And a lot more has to be done at the individual level – – people need to eat healthy and exercise – – most cancers aren’t caused by chemical exposure but poor diet too high in fats, salts and sugars, and not enough exercise.