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On February 3, 2023, a freight train carrying vinyl chloride derailed along the Norfolk Southern Railway in East Palestine, Ohio, United States. Emergency crews conducted a controlled burn of the spill on the request of state officials, which released hydrogen chloride and phosgene into the air. As a result, residents within a 1 mi (1.6 km) radius were evacuated, and an emergency response from agencies across three states was initiated. Background The derailed train was a Norfolk Southern freight train, which consisted of three locomotives, nine empty cars, and 141 loaded cars. The train was operating from the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis yard in Madison, Illinois, to Norfolk Southern's Conway Yard in Conway, Pennsylvania. Electronically Controlled Pneumatic (ECP) brakes In 2014, Congress passed the Rail Safety Improvement Act which required ECP brakes for "high-hazard flammable" trains.. The accident train was not equipped with ECP brakes...

If there were ever a perfect movie to describe the trajectory of 2020, it would be “Chemical Hearts.” Much like this year, every time you think that this movie can’t get any worse, it does. 

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine sent a letter today to Department of Defense (DOD) Secretary Mark Esper asking DOD to enter into a cooperative agreement with Ohio EPA and the city of Dayton to take more expedient and preventative measures to address per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination and protect the Great Buried Valley Aquifer, which supplies drinking water to more than 2.3 million people in Southwest Ohio, including more than 400,000 people in the Dayton metropolitan area.

Deputies had declared the crowd an unlawful assembly.

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In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them.The price of a commodity good is typically determined as a function of its market as a whole: well-established physical commodities have actively traded spot and derivative markets. The wide availability of commodities typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (such as brand name) other than price. Most commodities are raw materials, basic resources, agricultural, or mining products, such as iron ore, sugar, or grains like rice and wheat. Commodities can also be mass-produced unspecialized products such as chemicals and computer memory. Popular commodities include crude oil, corn, and gold. Other definitions of commodity include something useful or valued and an alternative term for an economic good or service available for purchase in the market. In such standard works as Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics (1920) and Léon Walras's Elements of Pure Economics...

Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodic table. In some respects, zinc is chemically similar to magnesium: both elements exhibit only one normal oxidation state (+2), and the Zn2+ and Mg2+ ions are of similar size. Zinc is the 24th most abundant element in Earth's crust and has five stable isotopes. The most common zinc ore is sphalerite (zinc blende), a zinc sulfide mineral. The largest workable lodes are in Australia, Asia, and the United States. Zinc is refined by froth flotation of the ore, roasting, and final extraction using electricity (electrowinning). Zinc is an essential trace element for humans, animals, plants and for microorganisms and is necessary for prenatal and postnatal development. It is the second most abundant trace metal in humans after iron and it is the only metal which appears in all enzyme classes. Zinc is also an essential nutrient element for coral growth as it is an important cofactor...