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Comment by cwkoss | Hacker News Reader

I'm really worried about the effects on the food supply chain. The plume of chemical vapors covered a significant proportion this country's breadbasket. Corn, wheat and soybean fields got sprinkled with carcinogens, they will be harvested, turned into flours and processed derivatives, and could end up in practically any processed food on grocery store shelves.

Does anyone have a reassuring reason why I shouldn't be worried about this? Does the food industrial complex have controls to prevent chemically contaminated grain from getting into processed food supply chains? Is there a reason to believe the government is regulating this competently?

I think I'm going to try to avoid processed food and buy produce as locally as possible for a few years (which also has some other benefits anyways). But, am I being overly paranoid?

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> The plume of chemical vapors covered a significant proportion this country's breadbasket.

Does anybody have a scientific (not clickbait) citation for this?

The quick HYSPLIT plume simulation I ran[0] showed the plume crossing over New England on its way to the Atlantic. There is agriculture there, but I would hardly describe it as the nation's bread basket.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of contamination of the food supply from pesticides and soil-accumulating heavy metals in fertilizers. Buying local and organic food isn't paranoid, but it would be a mistake to over-attribute these pollution sources to the East Palestine incident.

[0] https://www.ready.noaa.gov/hypub-bin/hyresults.pl?jobidno=28...

Here's a hysplit for the date of the disaster

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/113wyj3/hy...

Looks like the plume didn't blow west much, which probably mitigates agricultural impact significantly, good point!

Indeed, different assumptions yield different data. The simulation I ran assumed 1.1 million lb of material released during the controlled burn on Feb 6 (this caused the famous "mushroom cloud" photos), while the Reddit sim seems to assume a constant release rate (quantity unknown) starting at the time of the initial derailment and fire. The actual plume will be some combination.

>Does anybody have a scientific (not clickbait) citation for this?

The lack of this in the coverage of the East Palestine train derailment is interesting.

So many of the claims goes back to TikTok videos and reddit comments.

This is absolutely a phenomenal point. I would be interested to know how one could test their own food and water at their house for a reasonable price. I can't imagine that any regulation would actually catch this. Water is a maybe (mostly they're concerned with other types of contaminates), but food is a concern for sure.

I'll just say this, I don't think worrying about the safety of your food supply (or any other goods) is overly paranoid -- environmental disaster or not.

I would urge you to consider the motives and reasons of those who would disagree with, or try and stop you from doing so.

Relax, unless the grains were grown next door and you got that batch of corn or flour you'll be fine. Otherwise it's going to be very diluted.

There are tons of carcinogens around, East Palestine is the least of your worries unless you live near there.

(I have zero scientific background)

You may have zero scientific background, but your rule of thumb numbers are quite correct.

By simple volume, people have more to be concerned about from the plastic vapors left over from the packaging and shipping processes for the food they're buying from the grocery store then the risk of vinyl chloride contamination from the East Palestine spill.

I would expect that most food is processed in batches, so there could be a few batches that are very dangerous, but most would be completely unaffected (assuming the chemicals don't persist through whatever cleaning/batch changeover processes)

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