from the nothing-to-see-here-read-the-summary dept.
A toxic onslaught from the nation's petrochemical hub was largely overshadowed by the record-shattering deluge of Hurricane Harvey as residents and first responders struggled to save lives and property.
More than a half-year after floodwaters swamped America's fourth-largest city, the extent of this environmental assault is beginning to surface, while questions about the long-term consequences for human health remain unanswered.
[...] In all, reporters catalogued more than 100 Harvey-related toxic releases—on land, in water and in the air. Most were never publicized, and in the case of two of the biggest ones, the extent or potential toxicity of the releases was initially understated.
Hurricane Harvey's toxic impact deeper than public told
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by cocaine overdose on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:02PM (9 children)
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:38PM (3 children)
Clickbait. 50 characters is perfect for generating clickbait to entice you to read the fking comment. On the other hand, 124 characters is the perfect limit to be vapidly expressive and convey the following has nothing of value.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:42PM (1 child)
but he had 494 including the spaces; he couldn't express his vapidity in the first 124. it just doesnt make enough sense otherwise because he builds into it.
its like hes a professional vapidist.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by cocaine overdose on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:50PM
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by cocaine overdose on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:52PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hyperturtle on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:58PM (3 children)
He also didn't actually read the article, or missed the details about which is expressed anger is directed (likely it has more to do with a problem with liberal elites in academia slanting discussion towards a viewpoint not agreed with, but that is just a guess). Directly under the headline, on the phys.org website page for the article itself, it states:
March 22, 2018 by Frank Bajak Of The Associated Press And Lise Olsen Of The Houston Chronicle
This article is on Phys.org in much the same way that it was here. No one here wrote it, but it may be of interest to the types of readers visiting the site.
That said, I believe that people shouldn't build in a flood plain, and if they do, the people building have a responsibility to claim more than just 'buyer beware'.
The buyer's should be aware, but the point is any concientous citizen can'tmake an informed decision if information is hidden, like the extent of the pollution and the health effects. Insurance companies need to know this too -- so they can deny the claim to rebuild but issue a check for the cost, if it turns out that just re-building on top of a new problem while doing hand waving about the known existing problems.. doesn't make any of it go away.
Probably it is a bad idea to build homes so close to things so toxic, but people apparently are ok with the prices involved to do that. You don't even need to know what is being hidden to realize that it's a dangerous precedent to mix toxins and people in a swampy bowl that will flood and mix the two together. It is only defensible because of the low housing costs, if you can consider that to be a defense. It's like the lesson from New Orleans that was learned was the wrong one--the lesson being that hurricanes and the resulting issues when they hit industrial sites that can release toxins only cause problems that happen to other people far away, because it'll never happen here.
(Score: 1) by cocaine overdose on Saturday March 24 2018, @03:18PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Saturday March 24 2018, @04:14PM
And that I agree with
(Score: 2, Interesting) by koick on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:08PM
Problem is when those lower prices to those individuals are offset by the payments of the greater community of tax/insurance payers when those individuals have massive health bills (like what may happen in this case) or when their whole community is turned into a superfund site. Because of this, shouldn't we (via government restrictions) have some say in limiting where people can call home, especially when we're funding someone's fourth home in a flood-plane or hurricane zone for example.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 25 2018, @04:10PM
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:02PM
All the red tape dems caused this. Industry loves spending money on exactly what it needs. Dems force us to spend on red tape. So SAD!!!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by idiot_king on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:44PM (11 children)
Just goes to show that the disasters caused by capitalism can actually take a long time to notice.
Nobody seems to remember the Deepwater Horizon incident. How will that effect the Gulf for decades to come?
I'm starting to see hope with the fact that so many young people are starting to fight back against corrupt terrorist organizations like the NRA, hopefully these young people will get in and eventually fix things and force these companies to be responsible for ruining the environment. Exploiting the planet purely for profits is just a sign of the times we live in. Once the beast of capitalism is slain, we'll have a chance again.
(Score: 2, Troll) by DannyB on Saturday March 24 2018, @03:20PM (4 children)
This and other news just shows us that we need to fix the environment.
Someone should do something. Like sign an executive order banning all hurricanes. Trump should speak to the president of Puerto Rico.
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @03:30PM (2 children)
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @04:14PM (1 child)
Yep, he needs to make sure the President of Hawaii is cool with it too. Such things require international effort and cooperation.
(Score: 1) by Farmer Tim on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:40PM
Came for the news, stayed for the soap opera.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday March 25 2018, @04:17AM
I went to Puerto Rico and I met with Governor Ricky, they call him the Governor. Great guy, very easy to deal with, unlike the VERY UNGRATEFUL Mayor of San Juan! And Puerto Rico has done amazingly well. We've done a great job. Tremendous hurricane! Big, big mess. They needed A LOT of paper towels to clean that one up. But only 64 people died. It's official, only 64. And that's unbelievable.
And I went to Texas. Let me tell you, Texas can handle anything! And I met Governor Abbott, he thanked me for the tremendous help I gave them with Hurricane Harvey.
And I met the President of the Virgin Islands. After Hurricane Irma & Hurricane Maria they should change the name. Both Category 5. People don't know this, a Category 5 hurricane is very strong. Very strong. And they had two of those in the same month. Very strong hurricanes, but the people are stronger. They'll handle this.
I think a big part of handling it is going to be the cyber cash. Bitcoin and many others. So many of our Bitcoin guys are coming to Puerto Rico. Because the tax situation there is tremendous for them. Beverly Hills -- I visited Beverly Hills this month -- it's very crowded there. Very hard to put in an airport when you live in Beverly Hills and the traffic is HORRIBLE. They closed off the streets for me, it was still horrible. In Puerto Rico you can have an airport of your own. There's no capital gains. No federal income tax. Great tax rate for our companies, very low. And maybe the Virgin Islands and Texas can do that too.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:39PM (1 child)
I'm not sure, but I think crude oil itself is just a lot less chemically reactive and carcinogenic than some of its derivatives used in plastic, textile etc. industries.
What does crude oil contain for shit? Benzene, toluene, anthracene? OK toluene is bad and benzene is very bad.
But now compare with styrene monomer [wikipedia.org] (precursor to polystyrene; toxic and flammable), and the very stable petrochemical waste products PCB's, dioxins.
I remember learning in Analytical Chemistry class that dioxin [wikipedia.org] was a special challenge to measuring techniques, because it was already carcinogenic at the parts per billion level, so it was very difficult to determine the signal of poisonous amounts of dioxin above the background noise of other compounds.
The Wiki page says that the WHO recommends that a person weighing 80 kg will probably not have any bad effects, from a dioxin exposure per month of 0.0000000056 grams.
That's not much. Are they going to take blood samples of every inhabitant of the industrial region of Houston TX, to determine if they should sue the petrochemical industry and their government?
Dioxin poisoning looks like this: Viktor Yushchenko [wikipedia.org]. You won't die from it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @09:19PM
Not really. It's just that crude oil seepage in some places is natural, so it doesn't get the bad press that a human release of 'chemicals' does.
(Score: 1, Troll) by linkdude64 on Saturday March 24 2018, @07:31PM (1 child)
Yes, you're right. With communism, they never surface. Much better choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25 2018, @01:18AM
You should probably make a new account, 8 bit seems more accurate.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 25 2018, @04:12PM
As well as an indication of just how weak those disasters are, if it's so hard to see them.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 26 2018, @04:28PM
How would this be related to Capitalism? So, if we were a Socialist State and those companies had been run by the government it would have been better? A Socialist state would make better choices relating to the environment? Hello China, Hello Russia.
We can do better with regards to protecting our Environment. Stopping the world's economy which is run on the backbone of giant ships that use a bunch of fossil fuels (And cars don't forget the cars!) won't solve anything. Moving towards clean energy is great. We're not there yet and it's dumb to expect companies that rely on and supply the fossil fuels to wholeheartedly embrace new technology.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @03:08PM (1 child)
The land owners don't want to lose property value and the EPA gains nothing from being the bearer of bad news.
Everyone else never mattered: https://www.atomichomefront.film/about/ [atomichomefront.film]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:03PM
You mean other than getting to keep their credibility when they claim that there are future problems that need to be addressed now?
It's amazing how half the country is so ignorant that they have no problems dealing with the consequences of these problems, but god help you if you want to actually do something to prevent it in the first place. People that ignorant shouldn't get to vote.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @03:16PM (2 children)
nearly 52,000 pounds of crude oil, yeah. Make that "23,600,000,000 milligrams" to sound even scarier to numeracy-challenged.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 24 2018, @04:38PM
52,000 pounds. So, 1 1/4 truckloads. Or, one truck, if the driver is willing to risk a ticket for being overweight. Well - maybe I've lost the habit of thinking like a tanker-yanker. Assuming a 5,000 gallon tank, you're not going to fit it all in one trailer. We're goint to have to bring a second trailer.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday March 25 2018, @04:24AM
We use pounds. Mexico and Canada use milligrams. Those are VERY BACKWARD countries.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Saturday March 24 2018, @04:57PM (4 children)
I had to stop reading the article, it was too painful.
Sickening.
The clear message from the article was: there was insufficient Texas government demand for information about hazardous spills. Especially that Exxon didn't bother to give information should not have been acceptable.
There was insufficient Texas government oversight and monitoring of unreported spills. Only when there were visible explosions was it impossible for petrochemical companies to conceal their problems.
The government declared:
which means (I think) that the Texas taxpayer will pay for the cleanup and the increase in cancer cases over the coming decades.
Actually I interpreted those sentences as that nobody had foreseen a pollution event of this scale and nature, and therefore the companies involved would have to be forgiven for not succeeding in containment.
Maybe they should have moved those industries further inland then, away from a hurricane zone in the Gulf of Mexico?
And most of all: the article didn't mention at all how the petrochemical industry in Houston was *prepared* for calamities, what kind of emergency procedures they had, if they followed them, were the companies successfull in preventing even worse spills?
There's only bad news in TFA, not a single good news story of "chemical company X managed to shut down their aniline [wikipedia.org] factory a week before the hurricane and proudly declared they had no spills, as was tested and verified and documented publicly by the independent Texan government tests after the disaster".
Why didn't Texans vote for the Green Party in the 2016 elections? I don't understand what is wrong with you people. I really don't. Don't you care about your children's safety?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:06PM
Because the Greens are in favor of a government that works for people and not corporations. Also, it's Texas, so they're pretty much dedicated to being backwards minded and generally backwater. Most of the damage to Houston would never have happened had the houses been somewhere other than the flood plains. Even just setting them up a few feet would have made a significant difference in some areas.
There's a reason why in less backward minded parts of the country, we don't let people build in the flood plains any more.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Saturday March 24 2018, @09:29PM (2 children)
It seems to me that what that really means is that the sociopaths who run those companies were told they have free rein to dump as much as they like during the hurricane, just make it look like the hurricane had something to do with it and there won't be any consequences.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Sunday March 25 2018, @11:05AM (1 child)
Yeah, I actually thought that as well, but I thought it was too paranoid a scenario to write down :-)
Imagine you are the director of a chemical factory in Houston Texas.
Imagine you have a chemical waste storage for the PCB and dioxin containing byproducts of your factory.
You have to send it to a specialized expensive destruction company, but you might as well wait until profits are up a bit, or the laws change.
Fast forward 20 years
(1) Now you have a ginormous tank with 20 years of this waste doing nothing but slowly rusting the waste silo and costing money. All previous directors shoved the problem forward in time. Profits are down and the environmental laws have become stricter and the destruction company asks for much more money than 20 years ago (no competition anymore from the cheap one that was run by the local maffia).
(2) Suddenly out of the blue, Hurricane Harvey is passing straight over your industrial terrain! Shock! Horror!
(3) ????
(4) An Act of God made your chemical waste disappear from the location that you have responsibility for!
(5) Profit!!!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Taibhsear on Monday March 26 2018, @05:21PM
That would be illegal. The chemical factory would likely be considered a "Large Quantity Generator." There are regulations for how long you can store waste or hazardous products.
https://www.epa.gov/hwgenerators/categories-hazardous-waste-generators [epa.gov]
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:59PM
I though I posted this comment already, but here goes: about TCDD, dioxin [wikipedia.org]
I write this in the hope that you find it interesting and that you didn't already know.
According to the Wiki article, the WHO claims it is quite harmless for people in part per billion doses; for a person of 80 kg, if you have a dioxin exposure of around 0.0000000056 grams per month then you'll suffer no bad health effects.
If you want to look like the Ukraine prime minister Viktor Yushchenko [wikipedia.org], you need 6000 times more dioxin than that.
That's, unfortunately, still a microscopic dose... 0.03 milligram.