Exposure to high concentrations of ammonia in the air can cause burning of the eyes, nose, throat and respiratory tract, and can result in blindness, lung damage or death, health officials say. Exposure to lower amounts can result in coughing and irritation of the nose and throat.
It was a mistake to hand America's rail system off to private companies and then de-regulate them
And it continues to be a mistake everyday we ignore the problem.
It was always private companies. Givt gave tgem lots of land and money, looked the other way at incidents like this, and let them merge like rabbits in the 80s-90s.
And took passenger off their backs in the 70s, forming Amtrak.
We need to establish National Trackage Rights for true competition and improved safety.
Selling off Conrail is still an inexplicably stupid decision to me, even looking at it from the full neoliberal brainrot angle.
I worked for them at the end. We called it Clownrail. Former CEO has a Harley dealership.
Managers got wads of cash, union people got fired by NS if they were union officials.
These railroads merged last year, who did absolutely nothing to deter it?
Oh great! Just like East Palestine, Ohio. Just a little boo boo, no big deal!
The rail gods demand a chemical sacrifice
Or like the shipping company that destroyed the bridge and Biden offered to have the feds pay for it totally unprompted....
Why are people always wanting to hold these poor billion dollar corporations accountable for their actions?
Won't anyone think of the stock prices?!
I haven't been following the bridge situation, but I thought the idea was that the company would ideally pay eventually, but by having the government pay now they get a bridge much sooner than waiting for years as the shipping company drags it though the courts? Assuming the shipping company doesn't pull some "we aren't American, you can't make us pay shit" move.
Biden could just seize their assets and auction them off till it pays the debts. It's a multi-billion dollar international shipping company with probably more assets just in that one port than it would cost to replace the bridge...
And before you say "that would be wrong".
Reminder that civil asset forfeiture is still a thing. If a cop finds $5k in cash on you he can just fucking take it.
The president doesn't have the power to do that.
American railroads are going to have their Boeing days. They richly deserve them, even if genpop doesn't.
Don't live near an active track if possible.
Honestly? I really doubt that, unless you consider the events that lead up to Conrail as already having had their Boeing days. The American rail industry is an absolute disaster, and has been for decades. Derailments happen quite frequently (on average 3 a day in the US), you just actually hear about them now due to East Palestine. None of this is new.
The derailment statistics are a bit misleading. A single car slipping a single wheel on the rail is considered a derailment.
There's a book on the fall of the penn central. It was wall street. Pennsylvania paid dividends through the depression, then wall street/bankers made the merger and it went bankrupt.
Conrail was 5 bankrupt railroads melded by the govt about the same time it also took on passenger service, big time corporate socialism.
First thing the railroad companies did was lobby to cut passenger-amtrak funding for more airport funding, see also John McCain.
While the dividend certainly played one of the biggest roles, it's far from the only one. Penn Central was doomed to fail from the start.
The Pennsylvania Railroad especially was just an absolute mess. Extreme amounts of embezzlement, an outright refusal to ever upgrade tracks, and the outright criminality of people like David Bevan were all just as, if not more to blame for it's death.
Mostly? Well, that sounds safe.
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.