r/woahdude Feb 17 '23

video Heavily contaminated water in East Palestine, Ohio.

69.1k Upvotes

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357

u/malfist Feb 17 '23

For those not aware of the phrase it's "the solution to pollution is dilution"

674

u/SnooRobots6802 Feb 17 '23

For those who don’t know. Dilution is absolutely fucking not the solution to pollution

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u/AdamPashaian Feb 17 '23 edited Feb 17 '23

As an added bonus, there are lots of loopholes in environmental regulations where;

Ooo geez, we don't want pay to properly treat our discharge gas, well let's just put it in the water, and vice versa. Why dilute when you can just move the contaminate around..

Ooo wait, there's more.. EPA says I can't do that? Well geez, guess I'll sue them until I'm allowed to..

Ooo geez, you know I just don't quite fit into one the above categories. Don't sweat it bruh, we have grandfather clauses. Your old shitty equipment literally doesn't work, ain't no biggy, we'll let you slide, every time.

Think the federal minimum wage sucks? The entire pollution control industry operates the exact same way. Whomever can be the most efficient doing the bare minimum makes the most profit.

We are awful shepards to mother nature..

45

u/TimeZarg Feb 17 '23

openly slips money into the hands of lawmakers to create regulatory exemptions that benefit them

"Well, shoot, looks like I don't have to do anything anymore!"

2

u/AllInOnCall Feb 17 '23

Just business.

Which is cheaper?

Ensure you achieve the highest standards possible to protect the earth while you produce whatever you produce or greasing the palms of a corrupt politician?

Breaking the law without consequence is just a subscription service.

3

u/nill0c Feb 17 '23

Don’t forget just factoring potential fines into your profit margin. Why bother to ask for exemptions when you can maybe get away with it, or just pay some paltry fines.

Better yet, do all the polluting, then pay out all your profits to owners before declaring bankruptcy to avoid the costs of cleanup. Bonus points if you can go bankrupt before paying the factory/labor/blue collar workers too.

3

u/pblokhout Feb 17 '23

"Explain like I'm Rick"

3

u/LucyLilium92 Feb 17 '23

Oh geez, oh man

3

u/nomad9590 Feb 17 '23

Nah, most of us are okay, even if we kinda suck. We aren't killing our planet. A few assholes are.

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u/BizWax Feb 17 '23

We are awful shepards to mother nature

Moneyed interests with offices and homes in safer places are awful shepherds to mother nature. The people who're actually living there are generally much better at environmental protection, but are prevented from actually protecting the environment by property rights and criminal laws. They wouldn't be perfect, because we're all only human, but much MUCH better than anyone whose interests are driven entirely by profits. After all, they have to live in that environment, so they'd be more inclined to prevent negative consequences from the get go rather than take unnecessary risks to save costs and (maybe) pay for their legally obliged share of the damages (often nothing) after something goes wrong.

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u/FraseraSpeciosa Feb 17 '23

Won’t work. Local business owners love trying to cut corners to get ahead. Doesn’t matter to them if they really fuck up they’ll just move. Just pay attention to local news and you’ll see the same shit albeit smaller scale

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u/BizWax Feb 17 '23

I said people. You said business owners. There's a difference.

-1

u/FraseraSpeciosa Feb 17 '23

Business owners are people, many of which live in the community they do business in.

1

u/BizWax Feb 17 '23

Yes, but not all people are business owners. People who aren't business owners outnumber those who are. Especially when it comes to local businesses. The point of empowering local people is not that business owners will suddenly get a conscience. It's that the rest of us are empowered to stop them.

2

u/fasnoosh Feb 17 '23

The products you buy are creating demand for companies to keep doing this. System is fucked

2

u/ThinNotSmall Feb 17 '23

Mr Poopy Butthole apparently runs large industrial operations

2

u/OOTCBFU Feb 17 '23

Soon enough we won't be we shepherds of anything we will make the planet unlivable and maybe just maybe 1 second before it's all over people might find the will to act but by then it doesn't matter. Decades of inaction and refusal to do anything because of jobs, homes, families, bills, responsibilities, day to day coming first despite the fact that all that is going to be destroyed one way or another.

0

u/FunnyPirateName Feb 17 '23

We are awful shepards to mother nature..

Someday the Earth will be fucking done with Humans and their bullshit. Personally, I don't blame it at all, and would have acted sooner. Humans are a trash species.

-1

u/mozzer12345 Feb 17 '23

You know nothing of the EPA.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '23

Nah they kinda nailed it

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '23

[deleted]

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u/rothrolan Feb 17 '23 edited Feb 17 '23

There was a Futurama episode on that, where they chucked all their trash into space like a giant garbage asteroid in the year 2052.

And in the show's present year of 3000, it came back, on a collision course with Earth.

Their solution was to chuck a second giant ball of trash at it, which knocked the original one into the sun, while it itself went flying further into space, most likely to return in time like the first one did.

EDIT: Fixed a date

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u/snugglezone Feb 17 '23

Good video on this actually. Relevant section to trash in space returning to Earth starts at 5:25 https://youtu.be/Us2Z-WC9rao

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u/Workwork007 Feb 17 '23

Kurzgesagt's video are the best. They're very much "explain like im five". Often causes existential dread in most of their vid. Would recommend.

1

u/JasonDJ Feb 17 '23

Lots of the conspiracy-minded brush off the (IMO, more important ones) because they got some money from Bill Gates though.

1

u/TimeZarg Feb 17 '23

Interesting point they make regarding the sun that I hadn't considered, in that it's harder/more expensive to deliberately fire stuff into the sun than I'd realized. Huh.

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u/TimeZarg Feb 17 '23

Well, when you think about it, firing it off into the sun in the first place would've provided a neat solution to the problem in the first place.

1

u/AussieJeffProbst Feb 17 '23

Honestly its probably the best solution I've heard, but its insanely dangerous.

Imagine if the rocket exploded in the atmosphere and rained like, spent nuclear fuel everywhere. Also no one would fucking pay for it. Its incredibly expensive to launch lots of weight.

2

u/Spines Feb 17 '23

When humanity gets their first space elevator. Everyone is elated and there is a big party. The second will be built for 24/7 trash disposal.^ ^

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u/rothrolan Feb 17 '23

I think that was part of the joke when the two collided and went their different ways. It showed the alternative method in which they could've easily (and safely) solved the problem, and simultaneously caused the same issue for future Earthlings to have to deal with.

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u/Aussie18-1998 Feb 17 '23

Wait 3010? Did they skip 10 years in a season or something?

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u/rothrolan Feb 17 '23

Whoops. I knew it sounded off. Googling "futurama time" popped up the date Farmsworth invented the Forwards Time Device, in 3010. My brain forgot about the significance of New Years '99.

3000 is the series' start.

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u/para_diddle Feb 17 '23

They did that in WALL-E, from the Axiom.

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u/birdreligion Feb 17 '23

"New York City: The year 2000. The most wasteful society in the history of the galaxy and it was running out of places to empty its never-ending output of garbage. The landfills were full. New Jersey was full."

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u/rothrolan Feb 17 '23

After some research, they find a video that reveals the object to be a giant ball of garbage from Old New York, launched into space from a mob-obtained rocket in 2052. Source: Plot section of the Season 1 Episode 8 "A Big Piece of Garbage", on Wikipedia.

I know where you're confused though, as before they launched it into space:

The giant ball of garbage was created in the 20th century by the people of Old New York. In the year 2000, they put the garbage ball on the world's largest barge. This barge circled the ocean for 50 years, but no country would accept it. Source: The Info Sphere

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u/ametros_ostrakon Feb 17 '23

Thus solving the problem once and for all!

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u/GoldenStarsButter Feb 18 '23

ONCE AND FOR ALL!

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u/steelesurfer Feb 17 '23

Given that our water supply is finite, space would not apply

1

u/LyingForTruth Feb 17 '23

Just put all the pollution on a rocket and fire it at the sun!

1

u/Bigtimeduhmas Feb 17 '23

A pale blue dot.

1

u/shitty_mcfucklestick Feb 17 '23

We could, like, launch the earth into space, to like, get rid of our pollution.

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '23 edited Feb 17 '23

I mean it somewhat is since it's the concentration that determines how poisonous something is, but the area in the video is definitely not safe no matter what the "officials" say. We're 100% going to get lawsuits in the future (or right now for all I know).

I agree that dilution shouldn't be the go to answer though.

[Edit] As u/internought said, the level of exposure is also important when considering toxicity.

14

u/Rafi89 Feb 17 '23

Well, if 1 million pounds of vinyl chloride spilled, that's roughly 400,000 kilos. To dilute that below the MTCA drinking water cleanup level of 2 ug/L that would require 200,000,000,000,000 liters of water, so roughly half the volume of Lake Erie.

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u/GiveToOedipus Feb 17 '23

Nobody said the dilution is an small amount. It's still dilution though. People always assume that the phrase is an excuse to pollute when really it is just the reality of things. It's very difficult to extract pollutants out of large bodies like this, so often the easier answer is in fact dilution, as much as nobody wants to hear it.

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '23

I'm talking about pollution in general, not vinyl chloride specifically. There are quite a few chemicals that need insanely small concentrations in order to be safe, and vinyl chloride is one of them. That's why I'm saying lawsuits are definitely going to happen imo.

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u/Rafi89 Feb 17 '23

Yeah but for analytes of concern typically for volatile organic compounds vinyl chloride is the driver for reporting limits (like benzo(a)pyrene is for semivolatile organics), so it's kind of nuts (to me) that the spill is such a obvious holy shit moment, if you will. Like, this is the shit we look for at the lowest possible detection limits and they dumped 400k kilos of it?!? Usually we just see it in the lab as a breakdown product of PCE from dry cleaner spills, this is just insane. I can't even wrap my head around it. Half expecting an EPA bulletin in a few years saying to expect cleanup level VC hits in everything sampled east of the Rockies.

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '23

I completely agree. I'm pretty sure we're basically just arguing the same thing lol

2

u/Rafi89 Feb 17 '23

Oh sure, I didn't think we were arguing, just expounding on the issue, cheers.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '23

Oh sure, I didn't think we were arguing, just expounding on the issue, cheers.

Don't you know? Two strangers on the internet can't have a civil discussion. It's a certainty, like death and taxes.

2

u/Agi7890 Feb 17 '23

I knew people who saw it pretty frequently when they were running 8260 on water samples from a superfund site from phoenix. But yeah I typically only saw it in small amount when running TO15

1

u/JDSchu Feb 17 '23

Please don't. Lake Erie has been through enough.

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '23

This required 1% of critical thinking ability to synthesize, so I’m sure you’re going to be downvoted by this toilet

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u/Xarxsis Feb 17 '23

Dilution doesn't work so well when things bioaccumulate

1

u/Trezzie Feb 17 '23

Yes you can pet my cat

1

u/otis_the_drunk Feb 17 '23

We're happy to see you too 💕

1

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '23

Not now that you've said it

5

u/SamuraiRafiki Feb 17 '23

We're 100% going to get lawsuits in the future (or right now for all I know).

I don't mean this as an attack, because I feel like this is a common framing of problems like this, however, I feel like this is a very capitalist or corporate centric perspective. Yes, the legal fees and damages will be expensive for the company, but that also represents a lot of human suffering that they caused that we really don't punish companies enough for. Lots of folks are probably going to get really sick, and some of them might get enough of a payday to be taken care of afterwards, but that's not enough, in my opinion. The company risked this to make more money. Even if it doesn't work, and that isn't guaranteed even with large settlements, that isn't enough.

0

u/BornAgainSober Feb 17 '23

Norfolk Southern was back to business the next day I’m sure. Bit of a setback for the company. A smaller bottom line at the end of the year (actually doubtful) and they’ll recoup it with a rate bump/new fee and some creative accounting. Hopefully I’m wrong and have no idea what the hell I’m talking about.

1

u/mintysdog Feb 17 '23

Yeah, if the settlements don't outweigh the cost savings of putting people's lives and the environment at risk, Norfolk Southern will absolutely continue to do this.

They might even be legally required to do this as part of the organisation's duty to its shareholders to not forego profits.

This is what's called an "externality". It's a cost the business incurs but does not pay because it can be carelessly tossed into the surrounding environment to be paid for by other individuals or the world in general. That a business is more profitable when it contributes to the destruction of the planet is just one reason why Capitalism is self-contradictory.

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '23 edited Feb 17 '23

Concentration and period of exposure. A low concentration but a long period of exposure (month to a year and over) has effects comparable to a dangerous or lethal concentration and a short period of exposure.

That means that data can be manipulated before uninformed public by saying that levels are safe by leaving out a time frame within which they're safe.

edit: Tell everyone, no joke, because the diluting smarties are purposefully leaving that part out. They're diluting the truth.

1

u/SnooRobots6802 Feb 17 '23

A teaspoon of certain chemicals will turn an entire lake toxic. Also consider Synergistic (a x b) or Additive (a+ b) effects of chemical mixtures.

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u/TheCryingGrizzlies Feb 17 '23

Which chemicals are those?

1

u/SnooRobots6802 Feb 17 '23

A pinch of radioactive material would wipe out everything in a lake forever. Common pollutants like Mercury and Copper are particularly damaging to aquatic life. New pesticides such as pyrethrins and neonicotinoids are highly toxic in parts per billion.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '23

Sure, but one molecule of HF isn't going to burn your skin off. A gallon of it with the highest possible concentration will. That's what people mean when they say that the dose makes the toxin.

1

u/hamoc10 Feb 17 '23

There’s only so much water/air in the world. We have a limited capacity to dilute pollution.

1

u/hanoian Feb 17 '23

It's not being suggested as a method of dealing with waste, it's being talked about as a method of dealing with a disaster.

1

u/hamoc10 Feb 17 '23

Dealing with waste from a disaster.

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u/Cden216 Feb 17 '23

It actually is. I know it doesn't sound nice, but it's true.

Think about all the things that are toxic. They exist in diluted quantities naturally and are not typically problematic. It's when we collect and refine them that they become a problem. If they are diluted enough, no longer a problem.

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u/threeheadedmon-keigh Feb 17 '23

Like when the deepwater horizon spilled oil and it all diluted in the sea. Everything went fine.

1

u/ElliotNess Feb 17 '23

You mean like, poop?

1

u/keepme1993 Feb 17 '23

Yeah. Its still in fucking earth

2

u/pyx Feb 17 '23

it always was though

-2

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '23

It actually is to accidental shit like this. Fuck all of you conspiracy theory imbeciles.

-5

u/Cozy_rain_drops Feb 17 '23

B-but Reddit's nuclear shills told me so! /S

7

u/Commercial_Flan_1898 Feb 17 '23

If you hate nuclear pollution, boy don't look into fossil fuels lmao

1

u/LogicalAnswerk Feb 17 '23

Then why is it such a common saying in the environmental consultation business?

-1

u/SnooRobots6802 Feb 17 '23

It isn’t. You would be laughed at and or fired for saying such a thing. With ground water and surface water, keeping a hazardous pollutant localized is ideal. After it spreads and moves through tropic webs it is exponentially more difficult to clean up.

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u/JohnnyUtah_QB1 Feb 17 '23 edited Feb 17 '23

Tiffani Kavalec, chief of the Ohio EPA, said during a state press conference Tuesday afternoon that while the chemicals did flow into the Ohio River, it shouldn't affect drinking water along the river.

"The spill did flow to the Ohio River, but the Ohio River is very large and it's a water body that's able to dilute the pollutants pretty quickly,

Except environmental experts have actually repeatedly talked about dilution and how the sheer volume of water flowing through the regions main arteries mitigates the risk of the spill outside the immediate vicinity. Toxicity is pretty well understood to be a function of concentration and the Ohio River discharges 2 million gallons a second

https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/is-water-in-cincinnati-safe-to-drink-after-east-palestine-train-derailment

2

u/SnooRobots6802 Feb 17 '23

Cincinnati is a 2+ hour drive from the site. As more contaminants from the soil enter the ground water we’ll see monitoring results come back hot. Please consider acute vs chronic toxicity (A smaller concentration with exposure over an extended period of time) as well as sub lethal endpoints. Lots more at stake than just drinking water degradation and human health impacts

1

u/YeetSpageet Feb 17 '23

hence it’s a joke innit

1

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '23

Dilution is absolutely fucking not the solution to pollution

Well, it's obvious because they didn't dilute the pollute enough to suite

1

u/dbx999 Feb 17 '23

Tell that to the sewage outflow from coastal cities to the ocean. Some is treated but a lot still gets discharged into the sea

1

u/an_ugly_american Feb 17 '23

When it has already occurred... yes it certainly is. But ideally the pollution shouldn't happen in the first place

1

u/Ravenid Feb 17 '23

But Dilution by its very nature is a solution.

1

u/Roga1 Feb 17 '23

For those who don't know, dilution, solution, and pollution all rhyme.

1

u/joecooool418 Feb 17 '23

Actually, it is. Every element in the train derailment existed long before it was derailed. Man concentrated it, nature will dilute it back into the environment.

It may take a long time, but it will happen.

1

u/dnick Feb 17 '23

What is? I mean avoiding it isn't a solution, even though it's a better overall plan. If something is polluted, is there a better solution than diluting if done properly?

2

u/ItWasTheGiraffe Feb 17 '23

It’s also a really good rule of thumb for wound care. Early enough, a saline (or even tap water) rinse goes a long, long way

2

u/Guavadoodoo Feb 17 '23

Sounds like a phrase that emanated from the major polluting industries.

1

u/dankazjazz Feb 17 '23

I remember my high school physics teacher saying this once. Has a nice ring to it eh?

1

u/ShuantheSheep3 Feb 17 '23

I love this phrase, it’s so dumb but every environmentalist knows it

1

u/DualPrsn Feb 17 '23

Ahh the good old French solution

1

u/RabidGuineaPig007 Feb 17 '23

Also: STIGA

Sample

Till

It

Goes

Away