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Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

> There is no one in East Palestine who got sick from this.

You're saying this a decade or two early, don't you think? Cancer rates are a trailing indicator.

I'm not going to try to address the normalization of deviance implicit in the rest of your comment, because what would be the point?

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My first job (1983) was as a bench tech, at a defense contractor (microwave spy stuff/TEMPEST).

We all had these little bottles on our benches, with a funny silver lid that acted a bit like a "birdbath"[0]. You pumped it a couple of times, and the contents would come up, into a shallow bowl. You'd then take a long "Q-Tip" swab, dip it in the liquid, and use that to clean flux off the PCB you were fixing.

They also had open buckets, and people would wash entire assemblies off, in these buckets.

The liquid was trichlor[1]. We had gallons of it, sloshing around. If you got any on your hand, it made the skin turn white, and flake off. It smelled like the demon spawn of acetone and gasoline.

We were assured that it was completely benign, and not to worry our pretty little heads over it.

Let's just say that it can take some time to overcome [in]vested bias.

[0] https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2251832673900981.html

[1] https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/s...

1-1-1 Trichloroethane???

Even in 1990 or so when I first came across it (also for cleaning PC boards), it was known to be hazardous.

Yup. This was in 1983.

Lots of pretty hairy stuff, in that lab. The gold-plating room had 50-gallon drums of cyanide.

None of the contaminants are carcinogenic, really

> Vinyl chloride is a mutagen having clastogenic effects which affect lymphocyte chromosomal structure.[20][22] Vinyl chloride is a Group 1 human carcinogen posing elevated risks of rare angiosarcoma, brain and lung tumors, and malignant haematopoeitic lymphatic tumors.[23] Chronic exposure leads to common forms of respiratory failure (emphysema, pulmonary fibrosis) and focused hepatotoxicity (hepatomegaly, hepatic fibrosis). Continuous exposure can cause CNS depression including euphoria and disorientation. Decreased male libido, miscarriage, and birth defects are known major reproductive defects associated with vinyl chloride.

Yes, they found elevated rates of some cancers in people who spent their careers in poorly ventilated vinyl chloride production facilities. For the sort of concentrations and durations we’re talking about in East Palestine, it’s not carcinogenic.

It's nice to see someone using some logic in here, there is a ton of ignorance. The only issue is that people always need to find someone to blame. Most aren't going to take facts like you have provided and use that in their assessment of the situation. My main concern would be the groundwater if anything, not the byproducts of combustion that have long blown away in the wind, or the fact Joe Biden didn't come walk around the town. I can imagine the town hall meetings are full of ignorant fools who just want to blame and be angry or political.

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