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shawizkid t1_j8uttwa wrote

Reply to comment by crimeo in HYSPLIT Air Dispersion model depicting the potential transport of chemical plumes emitted by the East Palestine Chemical Disaster [Ohio]. Simulating February 3-7, 2023 [OC] by apathyEndsNow

I get your point, the graph doesn’t indicate what it’s tracking, which makes the data mostly irrelevant.

However you can’t argue that just because they don’t know exactly what’s been released, doesn’t mean it’s not concern. You say you would be worried at 200 miles. But how about 50? Or 30?

There’s a collective 1,400,000 people within a 40 mile radius of the town.

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crimeo t1_j8uuhys wrote

> just because they don’t know exactly what’s been released, doesn’t mean it’s not concern.

No, my argument was that they shouldn't be physically able to graph it AT ALL, if they don't know what it is at all. How... did they make the graph/model then...? If they don't know what the density of any of it is, or the temperature, or whatever? Even if all you know was that it was from the combustion column, then you should know roughly what all those things produce when they burn and be able to give a pretty good likely summary.

And if they do know what it is, why did they not label it?

> You say you would be worried at 200 miles. But how about 50? Or 30?

I only commented on this cause the guy directly asked me, it wasn't my original or main point "how bad" it is. That being said, even if this contains some of all of those chemicals listed above for sake of argument, but MOSTLY combustion products, a cloud in the light blue zone at hundreds of miles away, at 1 part per billion total and maybe 0.1-0.2 part per billion of worst-stuff is not terribly concerning IMO.

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shawizkid t1_j8uy4k3 wrote

Yeah. I mean to be fair you sound like you know more about chemistry than I do. But why can’t the graph it with some range of suspected densities of base chemicals/byproducts/etc. ?

The graphic may not be completely accurate but would be pretty representative of the direction, distance and density the compounds were likely to have dispersed.

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Shellbyvillian t1_j8vnn6o wrote

>you sound like you know

Key word here is sound. This person knows nothing about environmental modelling.

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Exoplasmic t1_j8x00iv wrote

You don’t need to know exactly what it is. You need a mass emission rate. Granted there’s some guess work. You know the mass leaked. You can guess % burned. But you still have to know % combined with oxygen. Still whatever compounds produced by burning are going to be really nasty. The were some fixed site monitors upwind that measured pretty high polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). I beg there were some chlorinated ones too. The just like regular PAHs, chlorinated PAHs are going to be around for a long time but longer. And Cl-PAHs are going to more toxic and there’s not a lot of good data to derive health benchmarks. We’re going to have to see what diseases pop up for people and ecosystems.

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crimeo t1_j8xbv1f wrote

You should definitely need to know the temperature "Burning hot right out of a fire" or "cold, evaporated" is going to change the elevation and which wind patterns it is in by hundreds, thousands of meters...

Just labeling that alone would be great, because then from the chart of what was in the tankers and what burned and what didn't, etc, we could estimate what it is a plume of ourselves.

> The were some fixed site monitors upwind that measured pretty high polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

That seems way more interesting than this chart here (just in general, downwind readings make more sense for what people would care about, and skips right over the question of what the stuff is...), do you have a link for this?

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