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Chemical Transportation Risk and Safety

tschuetz
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In response to

In April 2024, Formosa Plastics Corp. USA was among 137 companies to receive the 2023 Pinnacle Award by the Union Pacific Railroad for "safe shipping of hazardous materials". The transport company honors cusotmers that "release prevention protocols, corrective action plans and have zero non-accident releases of regulated hazardous materials shipments". 

Meanwhile, journalists at the Intercept have followed how in the aftermath of the East Palestine train disaster, lobbyists have both weakened rail safety (Thakker 2023) and supported the buildout of toxic polyvinylchloride (PVC) production (Mitchell 2023, 2024). The latter includes Formosa Plastics planned expansions in Louisiana's St. James Parish.

TCEQ's 1-mile rule

tschuetz
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"The “1-mile rule”: Texas’ unwritten, arbitrary policy protects big polluters from citizen complaints. It’s not found anywhere in state law or the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s rules, but for years the agency has denied citizens the ability to challenge air pollution permits because they live more than a mile away." (Baddour 2023)

Diane Wilson's writing

tschuetz
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Throughout her 30-year career, Diane Wilson has been a prolific author, having published several books (Wilson 2005; 2011) that have been highly regarded by scholars of feminist and environmental literature (Poe 2013; Thornber 2014; Aming-Hong 2022). Wilson's book, An Unreasonable Woman (2005), has been praised by Karen Thornber (2014), an ecocritical writer who has noted that the book highlights the "global consequences of local and national behaviors" and can "work to change consciousness in the absence of public policy" (Thornber 2014, 991). Moreover, literature scholar Heidi Amin-Hong (2022) has argued that Wilson's "documentary aesthetics" demonstrate how Formosa's pollution of Vietnamese waters is part of a longer history of pollution caused by militarized projects across transpacific geographies, ranging from Vietnam to Taiwan and Texas (Aming-Hong 2022, 1). According to Amin-Hong, Wilson's use of dialogue "decenters individual authority in favor of collective knowledge gathering and communal action" (Aming-Hong 2022, 6).

Matagorda Bay Fishing Cooperative

tschuetz
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"[Formosa Plastics] paid $50 million in a consent decree to create the Matagorda Bay Mitigation Trust. The money is spread across environmental restoration and protection projects to mitigate the effects of decades of pollution. It also establishes the Matagorda Bay Fishing Cooperative to help shrimpers and fishers and oyster harvesters revitalize local seafood businesses." 

Source: https://capitalandmain.com/hellcat-big-oil-great-grandmother-is-fightin…

New York City's electricity patterns during COVID-19

Briana Leone
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As outlined in this brief article by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, energy consumption by New York City alone has dropped significantly more than the surrounding areas. On a prima-facie observation, one could say the foregoing alleviates stress on the existing energy infrastructures. However, deeper analyses should consider the repercussions that demanding less energy may have on production, supply, and distribution, as well as transitions between larger and smaller electric microgrids. Given energy infrastructures in the United States are already vulnerable, can it be really said the pandemic alleviates stress on the existing energy infrastructures when everybody is connected to the internet and is generally using more technology at home?

pece_annotation_1479080239

Alexi Martin
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The object of the study was to determine what cultural competence means across the relationships of patients, clinicians, and administrators. The study was performed to reveal the 'barriers' in patient care becasue of cultural implications. The lack of a patient-physcian relationship due to cultural barriers whether that be race or ethnicity, lack of explanation of a diagnosis or the differences in appraoches to patient care- as percieved by administration, patients and doctors.

pece_annotation_1479080360

Alexi Martin
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The study is publiched on NCBI in a library of medicine for NIHM. On this database (original publisher could not be found- presumed to be in a medical journal, the author works for Columbia University) contains may important and valid articles that contain vital information for the future of mental and physical health of others. Publications in this database are natural and presumed to be credible because its association with NIHMS.

pece_annotation_1479080469

Alexi Martin
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The study was perfomed by taking three groups of people from a diverse hospital in Brooklyn-patients, administrators and physicsans and asks them the same ballpark set of question about cultural competence. And how it affects a patient-physician relationship. This is not a new way of studying issues, case studies are quite a common way (in group questioning) to determine how "populations" feel about a topic.