Omg I clicked on this because I remember hearing about Dioxin in “Yes Minister” (or was it in yes prime minister?). Nearly freaked when you mentioned it too. What a brilliant show, and yours is great too :)
@@awesomeferret i'd suggest subscribing to youtube premium if you don't want to see advertisements on FREE content my guy. Wikipedia is free and you dont have to watch video ads, but then again it's not in this nice neatly presented format with some great narration. Is it so crazy to support the creators providing you this entertainment? Sheesh. Thanks for everything you do Plainly Difficult, your work is appreciated!
@@RealBradMiller in my town, an elementary school was built over a landfill with dangerous chemicals. They didnt know while it was being built, but eventually figured out what was happening and made a special ventilation system to treat the air. They finally rebuilt another school to replace it a few years ago. Crazy stuff glad I didnt go there.
@@average0 I'm assuming that, since you said elementary, this was in the US. I've do recall reading about a school that was built basically on top of an area that was highly contaminated in some way, like either there was some kind of old chemical landfill beneath or something of that nature , I also remember it was in the US. I remember that basically the school was stuck there because the school itself nor the district they were in could afford to build a new one in a different place, not sure if it's the same one or not. I read this years ago, which is why details I remember are so vague. How recently was the school rebuilt, if you know?
@@average0 That's crazy! I didn't get a notification, I'm sorry! That's wild, hope no one had any lasting effects. On a slightly different note, many people don't know that you should pour bleach in your drains if they stink, especially floor drains, those have to have liquid in the U-bend or else vapors can come through. 👍
I honestly do consider myself, well basically, an expert in the study of nuclear shit. Not sure if all my newfound knowledge will ever prove useful- well let's hope it doesn't
I remember this from news reports at the time; Reader's Digest ran a story about it a few months later. (I don't recall the original source of the story.) The big problem was that the production of dioxin in this sort of failure was not known - it was days before anybody knew dioxin was produced and virtually nobody involved had any idea what dioxin was. A similar problem was encountered with Agent Orange, which (unknowingly) had variable levels of dioxins in each batch. In fact, the awareness generated by the Seveso disaster appeared a decade after Agent Orange reached wide use in Vietnam.
@@flagmichael I haven't done any research past PD's video, but he specifically stated that a manager was near the plant, noticed the red cloud coming out the chimney, and went back into the plant to shut the reaction down. If that's true then clearly someone knew that SOMETHING had happened, even if they didn't know what the exact reaction was.
@@themillera9 There is a big difference between "something" and "something dangerous." Not an hour ago, I ran to the stove because some dumplings I was cooking were overboiling. It made a mess, but it certainly wasn't dangerous.
@@gtw4546 With all due respect to your dumplings (hope they were good, btw) the scale of potential danger is not particularly comparable. I have worked most of my career around bulk chemical systems pertaining to water treatment plants. The general rule around large amounts of any kind of hazardous chemicals is that if there’s any kind of unintended reaction, leak, exposure, etc. you tell everyone immediately. You don’t wait. You certainly don’t try to pretend it didn’t happen. Stories like this one are the reason why you react that way. Better to be overly cautious and inconvenience everyone over nothing than to assume it’s no big deal and cost people their lives.
The story of the barrels with the toxic waste from the reactor is interesting too. They where put on trucks, went into France and got lost. Most likely someone had the idea to dump them some where for lower cost instead of burn the stuff at high temperatures in special facilities to destroy the dioxin properly. It took a big search and month of time to find them.
@Light Sage This story sounds really nasty. The reason for this is probably the same kind of ruthless greed, that turned the water supply of Flint into a deadly leaden (the 'e' is intentional) source of liquid... These things happen again, and again, and again. For instance, in the 1970ies, many of our german sports arenas still had their racing tracks covered with reddish gravel that consisted of slag/cinder - instead of Tartan - that was a leftover from the production of copper. It seemed to be a great way to make use of industrial waste, until it turned out that this stuff was full of dioxin, arsenic, mercury, and other nasty stuff.
I might add that the Seveso disaster led to the EU creating a set of directives named after the disaster. It consist of rules to limit the risks around sites that store dangerous chemicals, such as emergency plans, urbanization directives, frequent inspections of the stored materials and the processes that used them.
I’m wondering if UA-cam are manipulating my channel because I can’t seem to get more than 68 subs. Then a day or two later I’ll lose a couple of subscribers and then eventually it edges back up to 68.
The disaster of Seveso is now extensively used in Italy as example of what could happen if someone screws up a chemical plant in University courses. I think it was shown to me at least in 3 or 4 different times in different courses in my chemistry studies. Usually professors spend some time also showing the effects of chloracne and how awfully bad the disease is, especially on children. Just to make sure no one forgets.
The largest population exposed to Dioxin would be the ~1 million Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians whose crops were sprayed with Agent Orange, plus the ~40k US soldiers who were exposed to the stuff while handling it.
All the navy vets who were off the coast of vietnam (navy corpsman do get benefits though bc they were on land) dont even get va benefits for their related health conditions :((
"while handling" ?? How about, while marching under the canopies being sprayed? Boat-loads of our guys got that stuff sprayed on them. Everybody got it.
@@cashnelson2306 "This country is so fucked up" it's just humanity. i don't see horses, dogs, cats or whatever doing shit like this. mother nature probably was hoping for this vaccine with the name "covid" to help a little bit... but well, we are such a resistent virus that this planet will never get rid of us
'"Meta" is a Greek word, meaning "with", or "beyond", therefore metadioxin means it's with dioxin or even beyond dioxin. But that doesn't really matter, what matters, that it's completely inert. As opposed to other substances, which are...ert.' - Sir Humphrey Appleby
I believe the correct pronunciation is, 'mole-eb-din-um'. I have also heard an enormous number of people pronounce it, 'moly-bee-denim'. Youre doing a great job pal, keep up the good work, i love your videos.
Well, it's better than the video I saw when I googled how to pronounce it. They included the text of the video below the screen, and the person speaking jumped over the word without pronouncing it. Sigh! That's the internet for you.
A clarification: our friend #PlainlyDifficult , when he says, "fail safe," does not mean incapable of failure, rather it means that failure mode causes or ends up in a safe condition; for instance the doors in a prison are electrically operated, but in the event of a power failure they all lock, but can be manually controlled by the staff. This is in contrast to "fail dangerous" or "fail deadly" such as the inner workings of a nuclear missile, which if tampered with, would detonate parts of the explosives without going critical, so the warhead would be destroyed, along with whoever was tampering with it.
Talking of nukes, IIRC the book that Dr. Strangelove was based on was called Fail Safe. The joke being that continuing to drop the bombs was safer than turning back.
@@Philip271828 There was a rather grim movie from about the 1960's titled "Faiñsafe." It turned out, the whole world didn't die, just Moscow and New York...
Just to give you an idea of how toxic dioxin is, the EPA-mandated maximum contamination level for mercury in drinking water is 0.002 mg/L. The EPA-mandated maximum contamination level of dioxin in drinking water is 0.00000008 mg/L.
Nitpick. "Dioxin" isn't a single chemical, it's a group of chemicals. The chemical in question is actually 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin, or TCDD. It is one of many dioxins (though probably the worst). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin
@@LethalBB Actually, at >1 atmosphere of partial pressure, oxygen becomes toxic. This can't happen under any normal conditions on the planet obviously...but it is something that can become a problem anytime you have higher pressure (like in scuba tanks).
@@LethalBB The name is a bit misleading. The 1,4-dioxin they are referring to has the chemical formula C4H4O2. I am not a chemist but I think its name is derived from its carbon molecule structure, which would only show two elements at carbon ring points 1 and 4: two oxygens.
Okay yea but whomst the fuck is going to repeatedly say 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin? I mean if they do manage it, kudos to them. My tongue would be in a literal knot by the second time. And TCDD would get mixed in with all the other abbreviations in the video so its not entirely viable either.
Awesome video! I love seeing you cover these lesser-known disasters which, although largely forgotten about today, still had a tremendous and often lasting impact on many different communities. As a suggestion for future videos, I would recommend looking up the Rocky Flats Fires of 1957 and 1969 as well as Minimata disease.
The EU directives on "control of major-accident hazards involving dangerous substances" are called the Seveso directives (I, II, III) after this event.
Its kinda weird how thalidomide was so dangerous to infants, but it has been found to be useful when fighting cancer and tubercolosis. Especially when the original use was against sleep problems, in pregnant women and others
@Mikael Palm Alot of people blamed Russel Bliss for knowing that the oil he sprayed on roads to keep the dust down had dioxin in it, so he kinda became a scapegoat. It's hard to say if he knew or not, but the nearby Nepacco plant should also be most of the blame. Now the whole town has been torn down and was turned into a state park. I remember the place from when I was a kid, my family used to gather there before going over to Six Flags, which is like 15 minutes away. This was after the incident of course.
@@Murdoch493 Yeah, I don't think Bliss should have been vilified. He followed the rules in place at the time. The producer never should have illegally disposed of the contaminated oil.
I heard "Italian". I heard "Dioxin". I heard "Metadioxin means 'with' or 'after' dioxin or sometimes 'beyond' dioxin. It depends whether it's the accusative or the generative."
@@p1nkfreud No sweat, it's getting to be a pretty obscure reference these days. Well worth checking out, though! This is the clip I was referencing: ua-cam.com/video/ckgt4VWIsf4/v-deo.html&ab_channel=BBCComedyGreats
@@Werrf1 the BBC are uploading their old comedy shows on to UA-cam in short clips. Personally, I hate it, I hate that these brilliant and well written shows are reduced to little 3 minute clips online. But the one upside is that more people are now discovering shows like Yes, Minister. Unfortunately most of them are probably watching tiny bits of it, out of order, with no context :(
Some of the contaminated material from Seveso ended up at a chemical waste storage and processing facility in the Netherlands, where my Dad worked in the 1980s, and was subsequently incinerated at high temperatures at sea, which was then common method of dealing with dioxin, PCB and similar dangerous and hard to dispose of chemicals. They had Agent Orange at that facility, too, which was incinerated as well. Never had an incident, since they did their job well and followed regulations.
I'm from 1975 and living like 25km from that place. I remember we studied that disaster when I was young. It's sad it got lost in the memory now. But still a lot of people live there after the big remediation that followed this mess.
I drive past the location of where this occurred almost every day (it’s prononced Se-ve-zo). There’s an amateur football field over the exact zone of the mishap now, right on the border of a major regional highway (the Milano-Lentate provincial road, previously known as the Milano-Meda until it was extended). My gramdmother drove back and forward on that day with her windows down (as she was wont to do, as she was a heavy smoker) and noted “a strange smell” to her husband (my grandmother) that evening, and he went ballistic as he also operated and ran a chemical plant (albeit of a far lesser hazard level).
Me and my family lived close to that area (couple of miles) when I was 10. When that accident happened many children at school had skin conditions that last for some weeks. Years after voices said that many girls born in that year in the area had ovarian cysts that compromised fertility. Never seen official research about it, it is just memories I have. It was a very polluted area, many chemical plants. Now it is much better.
When I was in high school in 1979, I did a speech ("To Inform") for speech and debate competition which was very well received... on this exact incident, with a side-bar on the dioxin disaster at Love Canal and related sites.
Hello P.D! Since a common theme on your channel is industrial disasters. I was gonna recommend the swedish ”BT Kemi” (BT Chemical) disaster ending in a large area being covered in asphalt to help contain the toxicity. It wasnt as intensive, but rather a slow process over years and also included release of dioxin in nature.
Dioxin was discovered to be a toxin in 1957. As I recollect, a German chemist had his tech assist in synthesizing various dioxin isomers and she was poisoned by exposure to dioxins. The professor visited his tech in the hospital and discovered workers in the same hospital with similar symptoms, due to a factory accident. The professor then destroyed the dioxin samples by burning them, and published his paper. We now have safety data sheets for the chemicals, but most workers do not read them. Safety is still an issue!
I've just been binging these videos. Idk what it is whether the commentary, accent, interesting topics, the manner in which the information is presented, but it's been addicting to watch .
Little bit of trivia - in France factories producing dangerous stuff are now commonly named as "Site Seveso", after an EU directive on prevention of industrial disasters named after the Seveso incident. fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_Seveso
2,4,5 trichlorophenol is a chemical used in the production of many herbicides (or at least "was"). It is certainly the source of the fictional 2,4,5 trioxin of Living Dead infamy.
Nice video! A similar accident occurred in the SLOI plant in Trento, which produced tetraethyl lead. In 1978, the water from a rainstorm set on fire a large quantity of sodium and a toxic cloud was released into the air. Thankfully the fire was extinguished before it reached the lead and there were no direct fatalities, but the lead penetrated into the ground and severely polluted the area of the plant, which hasn't been fully decontaminated yet. There is a very thin layer of clay that divides the lead from the groundwater beneath, which makes the site a ticking time bomb.
Nice report. Your show become better and better. I will had 41 barrels from the Seveso clean up have been found in 1983 in an abandoned factory in the North of France.
You should do a video of the disaster that happened in my local town Flixborough, the nypro plant went up in 1974 and shattered the local area for about 10 miles out. I love your content and would love to see a video on this!
@@schore69 nah, her name's molly. We all know her for 'Mole, though didn't know about all the "bendium" business. Flexible as well. Who would 'ave thought.
Yes (Prime), minister is still one of the best shows about how politics ticks. I completely forgotten they even spoke of this, was it one of those Hamphry monologues on bureaucracy segments?
It was about a proposal to build a factory that produces “metadioxin”, a similar sounding (but totally different) chemical. Metadioxin doesn’t actually exist though, it was just for the show. Anyways metadioxin was totally inert but Jim blocked the factory being built, because there were a lot of (misinformed) protestors, and he wanted to mooch some popularity from them. And oh how relevant that is in our modern times!! It’s not about who is right, it’s about who shouts the loudest
so your a toxic mood person like me ? should seen me dive in a lake for a nuclear plant , it was quite a enlightening experience (the instructor ... "you can really enjoy diving here in the clear water" me looking at the compass spin circles due to the rebar in the concrete "i hope its rebar....")
I have a couple suggestions for ya! I think you should think about doing a video on BP Texas City, the MGPI Processing chemical disaster, T2 Labs, and the EQ hazardous waste plant disaster. I know the USCSB did videos on these, but I think it would be great for you to put your fun spin on them.
@@PlainlyDifficult no problem bro. You make great content that catches the attention of your audience. It gets even better that you respond to your comments
Most apologists for dioxin have often downplayed the negative health effects it has by citing this very accident! They claim that it demonstrates that dioxin - at worst - “caused acne” (!!!).
As per usual quite on point and perfectly balanced information that is maticously researched. You are setting the bar dude. Havin grown up and lived most of my live in Basel, Switzerland, I habe experienced a fair share of global chemical company giants like the here mentioned Hoffman- La Roche, CIBA and Sandoz. Before the latter two merged into global player Novartis, Sandoz was responsible for the worst chemical accident in the cities history when on saturday Nov. 1st 1986 one of their storage facilities caught fire in the middle of the night. Contaminated draining water from the firefighter crews could not be collected properly and bled into nearby rive rhine and poisened the water and turned it red. In th following days you could observe this red streak crawl downstream towards Rotterdam like a blood poisoning crawls up an arm and killing almost every living being in the river on its way. Quite a memorable and horrible day. Do you have any plans to cover the Schweizerhall incident?
I actually live in Seveso. Now all we have left of that tragedy is a beautiful park containing toxic residue in some restricted parts (underground). A good ending to a bad story. Edit: I sould add that I was not born yet in the 70s (I'm from the 2000s), but my parents lived here at that time and they were fortunate enough to be living in zone R. There has also been multiple cases of house robberies in Zone A just because it was just like a fallout-like world there. As far as I know nobody died just because of this, but for sure some people were affected. Right now there is almost no residue left over and all of it is hundreds of meters underground in restricted areas.
Hello, I am from Seveso too. The world happens to be small, sometimes :) I was one year old when it happened. The contaminated soil has been buried few meters deep in the same place (in sealed pools) and a park has been built over
i actually live in the neighboring town of Barlassina (which was mostly spared by the cloud) my mother always told me about the Icmesa disaster (she was 16 at the time). i never tought that someone will cover this story which is not very famous, thank you for your work! (town name pronounciation could be improved, but i can't complain :D)
Another perfect episode, gaining you new patreon. Btw if you are lacking nuclear disasters to cover, first nuclear reactor in Czechoslovakia had two in two following years 76 & 77 (it was experimental reactor of czech design where fuel could be changed during the run), there were actually deads, though not from iradiation) 4 on INES Scale
You should look into the Chemstar incident in Stalybridge/Manchester UK. And also a near miss In Dukinfield just up the road where it was found a chemical company was manufacturing Phenol right in the middle of the town!
Awesome, as always, But missing is the fact that Seveso was the 'first' big industrial incident in Europe and bootstrapped a whole legislation porting that name....
Not really the first. The Coalite incident in UK in 1968 had been even worse, but the company managed to sweep it under the carpet for several years, and UK ws not into EEC in 1968.
It's pronounced FEEN OL. It's important because "phenyl" as you're pronouncing it, is a different chemical moiety. Also. The precursor for trichlorophenol is TETRAchlorobenzene, not trichlorobenzene.
Thanks, I remember it well, and it changed regulations in Europe leading to these types of hazardous operation being very closely monitored and restricted. The "Seveso directive". Little was known about dioxins( there are lots of different dioxins), at this stage, but they became an even more hot topic when incinerators started burning waste transformer oils containing Poly chlorinated bi phenyls, incorrect combustion produced dioxins and another major change for the chemical industry.
Props to the off duty plant supervisor who ran TOWARDS the cloud of toxic gas to stop more people from getting hurt. While the plant failed in a major way that individual deserves credit for saving lives.
Microwave Popcorn: "Do not leave the microwave run unattended." Italian Chemical plant: Lets a giant vat of hazardous chemicals simmer over the weekend unattended.
ICMESA luckily was pretty small. In those years there were different town-sized plants, those worked 24/7. I remember the colums of fire from the chimneys in the night.
It was a small plant, as you can guess by the low quantity of chemicals involved. Those don't typically run 24/7, and it's commn to leave the chemicals where they are when the plant shuts down.
An Excellent series, sir ! May I suggest more of this kind of stuff, as it is fascinating. See if you can find industrial accidents that create things such as Flourine fires ( not related to normal fires at all. More dangerous) Also possible accidents at cryo facilities where Dewars rupture and stuff. Love your work on Orphan Sources ( big scary) ☢️ and your work in general. 💎👍
I knew it when the time I saw the title, you've just been watching Yes Minister. A good idea to order the whole DVD set though. It's a comedy gold of political satire
Wow, when I saw thumbnail picture, I immediately thought about "Yes Minister" show. And indeed you referenced to it as whole inspiration for this video!
There were many problems with that Disaster. For examble you missed that the said containers for the waste from the reactor itself didnt go to incineration first. They somehow went missing and showed up later in France. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveso_disaster#Waste_from_the_cleanup
Do you want to see another interesting video? ua-cam.com/video/23kemyXcbXo/v-deo.html
I suggest double checking your ad placements, I got like 3 ad breaks in this video and it's only a ten minute video.
I heard dioxin and I instantly recalled a BBC video by Yes, prime minister:
ua-cam.com/video/ckgt4VWIsf4/v-deo.html
Omg I clicked on this because I remember hearing about Dioxin in “Yes Minister” (or was it in yes prime minister?). Nearly freaked when you mentioned it too. What a brilliant show, and yours is great too :)
@@michael_v2624 same!
@@awesomeferret i'd suggest subscribing to youtube premium if you don't want to see advertisements on FREE content my guy. Wikipedia is free and you dont have to watch video ads, but then again it's not in this nice neatly presented format with some great narration. Is it so crazy to support the creators providing you this entertainment? Sheesh.
Thanks for everything you do Plainly Difficult, your work is appreciated!
"So where does that rupture pipe go?"
"Oh outside. You do NOT want to be exposed to that stuff."
The pipe leads right to the elementary school. XD
@@RealBradMiller in my town, an elementary school was built over a landfill with dangerous chemicals. They didnt know while it was being built, but eventually figured out what was happening and made a special ventilation system to treat the air. They finally rebuilt another school to replace it a few years ago. Crazy stuff glad I didnt go there.
@@average0 I'm assuming that, since you said elementary, this was in the US. I've do recall reading about a school that was built basically on top of an area that was highly contaminated in some way, like either there was some kind of old chemical landfill beneath or something of that nature , I also remember it was in the US. I remember that basically the school was stuck there because the school itself nor the district they were in could afford to build a new one in a different place, not sure if it's the same one or not. I read this years ago, which is why details I remember are so vague.
How recently was the school rebuilt, if you know?
@@Laxora_NZ I live in a decent area, and they were able to build a new school 2 or 3 years ago about a mile away.
Also yes this is in the US.
@@average0 That's crazy! I didn't get a notification, I'm sorry!
That's wild, hope no one had any lasting effects.
On a slightly different note, many people don't know that you should pour bleach in your drains if they stink, especially floor drains, those have to have liquid in the U-bend or else vapors can come through. 👍
I'm pretty sure your entire channel can be used as a nuclear/chemical engineering ethics class, good stuff
I was actually thinkng about sending this video to my old chemistry professors. It wont hurt
I'm actually using his Channel in my study in nuclear safety.
Agreed. Would be a good History Channel candidate, or one of those people who produce packages for news channels.
I honestly do consider myself, well basically, an expert in the study of nuclear shit. Not sure if all my newfound knowledge will ever prove useful- well let's hope it doesn't
If you're going to make money with cheap chemical products you're best leaving you're ethics at home x
The company only admitted to releasing deadly chemicals 10 DAYS later. That is criminal and they should have been punished harsly.
I remember this from news reports at the time; Reader's Digest ran a story about it a few months later. (I don't recall the original source of the story.) The big problem was that the production of dioxin in this sort of failure was not known - it was days before anybody knew dioxin was produced and virtually nobody involved had any idea what dioxin was. A similar problem was encountered with Agent Orange, which (unknowingly) had variable levels of dioxins in each batch. In fact, the awareness generated by the Seveso disaster appeared a decade after Agent Orange reached wide use in Vietnam.
@@flagmichael I haven't done any research past PD's video, but he specifically stated that a manager was near the plant, noticed the red cloud coming out the chimney, and went back into the plant to shut the reaction down. If that's true then clearly someone knew that SOMETHING had happened, even if they didn't know what the exact reaction was.
@@themillera9 There is a big difference between "something" and "something dangerous." Not an hour ago, I ran to the stove because some dumplings I was cooking were overboiling. It made a mess, but it certainly wasn't dangerous.
@@gtw4546 With all due respect to your dumplings (hope they were good, btw) the scale of potential danger is not particularly comparable. I have worked most of my career around bulk chemical systems pertaining to water treatment plants. The general rule around large amounts of any kind of hazardous chemicals is that if there’s any kind of unintended reaction, leak, exposure, etc. you tell everyone immediately. You don’t wait. You certainly don’t try to pretend it didn’t happen. Stories like this one are the reason why you react that way. Better to be overly cautious and inconvenience everyone over nothing than to assume it’s no big deal and cost people their lives.
@@themillera9 You are right. I've never worked around hazardous chemicals. Much has been learned (I hope) from these disasters. 🤞
The story of the barrels with the toxic waste from the reactor is interesting too. They where put on trucks, went into France and got lost. Most likely someone had the idea to dump them some where for lower cost instead of burn the stuff at high temperatures in special facilities to destroy the dioxin properly. It took a big search and month of time to find them.
@Light Sage didn't plainly difficult do a video on it?
@@varminthevermin8371 not that I can see.
@Light Sage Times Beach?
The Night of the Living Dead?
@Light Sage This story sounds really nasty. The reason for this is probably the same kind of ruthless greed, that turned the water supply of Flint into a deadly leaden (the 'e' is intentional) source of liquid... These things happen again, and again, and again.
For instance, in the 1970ies, many of our german sports arenas still had their racing tracks covered with reddish gravel that consisted of slag/cinder - instead of Tartan - that was a leftover from the production of copper. It seemed to be a great way to make use of industrial waste, until it turned out that this stuff was full of dioxin, arsenic, mercury, and other nasty stuff.
I might add that the Seveso disaster led to the EU creating a set of directives named after the disaster. It consist of rules to limit the risks around sites that store dangerous chemicals, such as emergency plans, urbanization directives, frequent inspections of the stored materials and the processes that used them.
And the name stuck, at least in France, since the zones that are under these specials measures are called Seveso zones/sites.
@@volvok7749 exactly. the AZF explosion cemented the name into the common memory because the term was overused by the media.
Didn't. Have. A. Thermometer.
:O
Why did YT unsubscribe me again???
That’s strange
@@robertl6196 Same thing happening here. Monopolies on anything are what they are.
I’m wondering if UA-cam are manipulating my channel because I can’t seem to get more than 68 subs. Then a day or two later I’ll lose a couple of subscribers and then eventually it edges back up to 68.
@@alexandercarder2281 you show as having 69 to me
Me: "Yee my Country cited in this channel !!!"
Also me: "Oh...my Country cited in this channel..."
I know the feeling, buddy.
Grue meme eh.
Oh... my city cited in this channel...
So come ci si sente...
The disaster of Seveso is now extensively used in Italy as example of what could happen if someone screws up a chemical plant in University courses. I think it was shown to me at least in 3 or 4 different times in different courses in my chemistry studies. Usually professors spend some time also showing the effects of chloracne and how awfully bad the disease is, especially on children. Just to make sure no one forgets.
3:00 "This will become apparent later in our story." I feel like this could be a secondary name for the entire series.
But the situation seemed legit to me...
And now you know 'the REST of the story...'
The largest population exposed to Dioxin would be the ~1 million Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians whose crops were sprayed with Agent Orange, plus the ~40k US soldiers who were exposed to the stuff while handling it.
All the navy vets who were off the coast of vietnam (navy corpsman do get benefits though bc they were on land) dont even get va benefits for their related health conditions :((
"while handling" ?? How about, while marching under the canopies being sprayed? Boat-loads of our guys got that stuff sprayed on them. Everybody got it.
That would be a clear 10 on the PD disaster scale.
This country is so fucked up
@@cashnelson2306 "This country is so fucked up" it's just humanity. i don't see horses, dogs, cats or whatever doing shit like this. mother nature probably was hoping for this vaccine with the name "covid" to help a little bit... but well, we are such a resistent virus that this planet will never get rid of us
"but its METAdioxin....completely different and safe" - Jim Hacker M.P.
'"Meta" is a Greek word, meaning "with", or "beyond", therefore metadioxin means it's with dioxin or even beyond dioxin.
But that doesn't really matter, what matters, that it's completely inert.
As opposed to other substances, which are...ert.'
- Sir Humphrey Appleby
"Wouldn't 'ert a fly." - Bernard Woolley.
Jim'll fix it!
@@deadfreightwest5956 no he didnt, Rip Paul Eddington!
That's the only reason I clicked on this video, yay Yes Minister!
My bad on the Molybdenum pronunciation, at least it’s created some chuckles!
Bend that Molly :P
I believe the correct pronunciation is, 'mole-eb-din-um'. I have also heard an enormous number of people pronounce it, 'moly-bee-denim'.
Youre doing a great job pal, keep up the good work, i love your videos.
It was brilliant!
Cover the Mother's Day fire at Rocky Flats?
Well, it's better than the video I saw when I googled how to pronounce it. They included the text of the video below the screen, and the person speaking jumped over the word without pronouncing it. Sigh! That's the internet for you.
"Side note" made me smile until I actually saw the photos and heard what the side note was. 😢
A clarification: our friend #PlainlyDifficult , when he says, "fail safe," does not mean incapable of failure, rather it means that failure mode causes or ends up in a safe condition; for instance the doors in a prison are electrically operated, but in the event of a power failure they all lock, but can be manually controlled by the staff.
This is in contrast to "fail dangerous" or "fail deadly" such as the inner workings of a nuclear missile, which if tampered with, would detonate parts of the explosives without going critical, so the warhead would be destroyed, along with whoever was tampering with it.
Talking of nukes, IIRC the book that Dr. Strangelove was based on was called Fail Safe. The joke being that continuing to drop the bombs was safer than turning back.
@@Philip271828 There was a rather grim movie from about the 1960's titled "Faiñsafe." It turned out, the whole world didn't die, just Moscow and New York...
@@baruchben-david4196 Dr. Strangelove directly borrows plot points from Fail-Safe, it just makes the events into a black comedy
imagine the sign saying "fail dangerous"... getting walk hard vibes here
@@tripplefives1402 Dr. Evil has entered the chat; tell me more
As chemist, I gotta say kudos, very excellent research work, and equally excellent and accurate presentation of the chemistry involved!
Thank you very much!
Just to give you an idea of how toxic dioxin is, the EPA-mandated maximum contamination level for mercury in drinking water is 0.002 mg/L. The EPA-mandated maximum contamination level of dioxin in drinking water is 0.00000008 mg/L.
That is very few milligrams.
I'm italian and my parents remember this. This factory was about 50 miles from our home.
How many arms you got
At first I thought you said "245 trioxin" which is the zombie chemical from "Return of the Living Dead"
Imagine my surprise
😂😂
Great film. Brains 🧠 I want brains 🧠
Sssssh! This is the next upcoming disaster that we are currently making just for this channel!
Send more paramedics.
@@alexandercarder2281 Well you can't have any we've run out nine months ago.
PD: “Today im gonna rate this disaster here on my plainly difficult disaster scale”
Me: oh shit it’s a 7 this gone be bad
Nitpick. "Dioxin" isn't a single chemical, it's a group of chemicals. The chemical in question is actually 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin, or TCDD. It is one of many dioxins (though probably the worst). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin
+1, watching whole thing think O2 isn't dangerous is it? Otherwise we'd have a problem :S
@@LethalBB Actually, at >1 atmosphere of partial pressure, oxygen becomes toxic. This can't happen under any normal conditions on the planet obviously...but it is something that can become a problem anytime you have higher pressure (like in scuba tanks).
@@LethalBB Oxygen is slowly killing you. At 2x its concentration in our atmosphere, wet living leaves will burn vigorously & dry stuff would explode
@@LethalBB The name is a bit misleading. The 1,4-dioxin they are referring to has the chemical formula C4H4O2. I am not a chemist but I think its name is derived from its carbon molecule structure, which would only show two elements at carbon ring points 1 and 4: two oxygens.
Okay yea but whomst the fuck is going to repeatedly say 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin?
I mean if they do manage it, kudos to them. My tongue would be in a literal knot by the second time.
And TCDD would get mixed in with all the other abbreviations in the video so its not entirely viable either.
You should do the Kosmos 954 accident if you haven't already. Soviet nuclear reactor-powered satellite that crashed into Canada in the 1970s.
Great idea, but don´t forget Kosmos 1402. Same type of satellite, and it almost did the same thing.
Awesome video! I love seeing you cover these lesser-known disasters which, although largely forgotten about today, still had a tremendous and often lasting impact on many different communities. As a suggestion for future videos, I would recommend looking up the Rocky Flats Fires of 1957 and 1969 as well as Minimata disease.
Got to *love* Yes Minister!
@Harold Slick ? the words of BREXIT at the end of December ?
Hell yeah
As soon as I saw the video was on Seveso I immediately thought of metadioxin...
@Harold Slick - How I loved Sir Humphrey's circumlocutions!
@Harold Slick Specifically, the way he talks *around* whatever the topic is, rather than *at* it.
The EU directives on "control of major-accident hazards involving dangerous substances" are called the Seveso directives (I, II, III) after this event.
I LOVE YES MINISTER (from the U.S. here). That is also one of my favorite episodes!!
I kind of want you to cover the thalidomide scandal but I don't know if its your kind of topic
Thanks for the suggestion
Its kinda weird how thalidomide was so dangerous to infants, but it has been found to be useful when fighting cancer and tubercolosis. Especially when the original use was against sleep problems, in pregnant women and others
wasn't it for morning sickness, during pregnancy.
@@jonathansmythe6273 It was at one point, yes.
@@PlainlyDifficult Why not branch out, yeah? Either way, love the content you create.
He should do Times Beach, another incident caused by dioxin
Is that the one with the guy who sprayed the roads with dioxin thinking it was oil?
@Mikael Palm Alot of people blamed Russel Bliss for knowing that the oil he sprayed on roads to keep the dust down had dioxin in it, so he kinda became a scapegoat. It's hard to say if he knew or not, but the nearby Nepacco plant should also be most of the blame.
Now the whole town has been torn down and was turned into a state park.
I remember the place from when I was a kid, my family used to gather there before going over to Six Flags, which is like 15 minutes away. This was after the incident of course.
@@Murdoch493 Yeah, I don't think Bliss should have been vilified. He followed the rules in place at the time. The producer never should have illegally disposed of the contaminated oil.
@@Murdoch493 Yup, the Nepacco plant was trying to get rid of its waste on the cheap and didn’t care about the consequences.
Just watched a couple videos on Times Beach a couple days ago and thought "I wonder if Plainly Difficult has done a video on this?:
Your videos have mega replay value...I watch them all repeatedly and usually (inexplicably) I learn new shit every time.
Thank you!
I heard "Italian". I heard "Dioxin". I heard "Metadioxin means 'with' or 'after' dioxin or sometimes 'beyond' dioxin. It depends whether it's the accusative or the generative."
No, in chemistry, "Meta" has a different meaning: A substitution at the 3rd carbon in a cyclic structure.
@@p1nkfreud Werrf1 was making a joke in reference to the 'Yes, Minister' episode that features Metadioxin
Hendrick Cavvendish Ahh, I seem to have missed the joke, I apologize.
@@p1nkfreud No sweat, it's getting to be a pretty obscure reference these days. Well worth checking out, though! This is the clip I was referencing: ua-cam.com/video/ckgt4VWIsf4/v-deo.html&ab_channel=BBCComedyGreats
@@Werrf1 the BBC are uploading their old comedy shows on to UA-cam in short clips. Personally, I hate it, I hate that these brilliant and well written shows are reduced to little 3 minute clips online. But the one upside is that more people are now discovering shows like Yes, Minister. Unfortunately most of them are probably watching tiny bits of it, out of order, with no context :(
WOOOO SEND IT. This is the earliest I've been for a while!
I live in Seveso right next to the Icmesa, where there is now a beautiful park
"molly-bendium" 🤣
Oh I would take some molly....
it's a 'murican pronunciation.
Nah.
Even Americans don't pronounce it that way if they know anything about chemistry.
@@Motoko_Urashima never heard that pronunciation in america
Yeah, cracked me up to. For the record: mo lib den um.
Some of the contaminated material from Seveso ended up at a chemical waste storage and processing facility in the Netherlands, where my Dad worked in the 1980s, and was subsequently incinerated at high temperatures at sea, which was then common method of dealing with dioxin, PCB and similar dangerous and hard to dispose of chemicals. They had Agent Orange at that facility, too, which was incinerated as well. Never had an incident, since they did their job well and followed regulations.
Agent orange is dioxin
My new favorite channel - great work & cheers from the US!
I'm from 1975 and living like 25km from that place. I remember we studied that disaster when I was young. It's sad it got lost in the memory now. But still a lot of people live there after the big remediation that followed this mess.
I drive past the location of where this occurred almost every day (it’s prononced Se-ve-zo). There’s an amateur football field over the exact zone of the mishap now, right on the border of a major regional highway (the Milano-Lentate provincial road, previously known as the Milano-Meda until it was extended). My gramdmother drove back and forward on that day with her windows down (as she was wont to do, as she was a heavy smoker) and noted “a strange smell” to her husband (my grandmother) that evening, and he went ballistic as he also operated and ran a chemical plant (albeit of a far lesser hazard level).
Me and my family lived close to that area (couple of miles) when I was 10. When that accident happened many children at school had skin conditions that last for some weeks. Years after voices said that many girls born in that year in the area had ovarian cysts that compromised fertility. Never seen official research about it, it is just memories I have. It was a very polluted area, many chemical plants. Now it is much better.
When I was in high school in 1979, I did a speech ("To Inform") for speech and debate competition which was very well received... on this exact incident, with a side-bar on the dioxin disaster at Love Canal and related sites.
That's what you get when you do not pay over hours: "My shift has ended, I'm going home".
The topic of dioxin accident reminds me of the Times Beach incident. It is an intresting topic and would be a great video
He's got a video on the subject if you haven't seen it yet
Hello P.D!
Since a common theme on your channel is industrial disasters. I was gonna recommend the swedish ”BT Kemi” (BT Chemical) disaster ending in a large area being covered in asphalt to help contain the toxicity.
It wasnt as intensive, but rather a slow process over years and also included release of dioxin in nature.
Dioxin was discovered to be a toxin in 1957. As I recollect, a German chemist had his tech assist in synthesizing various dioxin isomers and she was poisoned by exposure to dioxins. The professor visited his tech in the hospital and discovered workers in the same hospital with similar symptoms, due to a factory accident.
The professor then destroyed the dioxin samples by burning them, and published his paper.
We now have safety data sheets for the chemicals, but most workers do not read them.
Safety is still an issue!
No the issue is the silly workers thinking they deserve safety. Here in america, we dont like our workers.
@@larry_ellison Aqd byr kind of true.
It's pretty interesting to see how the processes are scaled up from a laboratory to industrial scale.
I still dont understand why the heck the reactor didnt have some temperature sensoring. Atleast that'd be expected from some operation like this.
Thanks for the great videos mate! Love your work!
Thank you
I've just been binging these videos. Idk what it is whether the commentary, accent, interesting topics, the manner in which the information is presented, but it's been addicting to watch .
Little bit of trivia - in France factories producing dangerous stuff are now commonly named as "Site Seveso", after an EU directive on prevention of industrial disasters named after the Seveso incident. fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_Seveso
Yes Minister! Excellent Show, as is Yes Prime Minister!
When he said "2-4-5" I almost expected him to say "Trioxin". 🤣
2,4,5 trichlorophenol is a chemical used in the production of many herbicides (or at least "was"). It is certainly the source of the fictional 2,4,5 trioxin of Living Dead infamy.
The detailed breakdown of the chemistry involved was unexecpted and very welcomed
I was going to comment that I only knew about this from "Yes Minister," but you beat me to it.
😬😬
Nice video! A similar accident occurred in the SLOI plant in Trento, which produced tetraethyl lead.
In 1978, the water from a rainstorm set on fire a large quantity of sodium and a toxic cloud was released into the air. Thankfully the fire was extinguished before it reached the lead and there were no direct fatalities, but the lead penetrated into the ground and severely polluted the area of the plant, which hasn't been fully decontaminated yet.
There is a very thin layer of clay that divides the lead from the groundwater beneath, which makes the site a ticking time bomb.
I get excited every single time I see your video notifications
It's good stuff, for sure.
Nice report. Your show become better and better.
I will had 41 barrels from the Seveso clean up have been found in 1983 in an abandoned factory in the North of France.
Had a political science prof that made us watch Yes Prime Minister in an international relations course in university. I love that show!
You should do a video of the disaster that happened in my local town Flixborough, the nypro plant went up in 1974 and shattered the local area for about 10 miles out. I love your content and would love to see a video on this!
Italians be like: Ey, I know a guy who knows a guy, that knows a guy who can get you rid of that nasty TCDD.
@Dylan sky i got a guy that knows a guy and both of those guys are me
Sorry, I'm only hearing Saul Goodman here now. "I know a guy who knows a guy who, uh... knows another guy."
And they usually called "cousin"
@@GianlucaPicco no , they are usually called a "cumpá"
Great to bring up Yes Minister! That episode says a lot about scientific ignorance in high places.
I am a fan of Yes Minister as well. I always assumed that this incident was fictional made up for the show. Thanks for the education.
I don't understand half of the technical details in these videos but still get what happened. Very interesting
2:16 Molybendium :D sounds interesting... the more bendable cousin of Molybdenum?
Moly's a sassy lass, aye.
@@The_Modeling_Underdog you mean lad?
@@schore69 nah, her name's molly. We all know her for 'Mole, though didn't know about all the "bendium" business. Flexible as well. Who would 'ave thought.
@@schore69 Molly Bendium has a sister called Wendy
@@Penguin_of_Death dont get it... is there a pun ?
Read a book about this when I was a kid and im glad to see its finally getting some due attention.
"Side Note", too funny. Nicely done.
Well done, even though I have never studied chemistry you still got the point across so I could understand.
Yes (Prime), minister is still one of the best shows about how politics ticks.
I completely forgotten they even spoke of this, was it one of those Hamphry monologues on bureaucracy segments?
It was about a proposal to build a factory that produces “metadioxin”, a similar sounding (but totally different) chemical. Metadioxin doesn’t actually exist though, it was just for the show. Anyways metadioxin was totally inert but Jim blocked the factory being built, because there were a lot of (misinformed) protestors, and he wanted to mooch some popularity from them.
And oh how relevant that is in our modern times!! It’s not about who is right, it’s about who shouts the loudest
You've added ad bars(or whatever they're called) and didn't trigger but you earned my sub for that alone. Great vid too, always a bonus 👍
We started watching Yes Minister recently too. It's funny how relevant it still is lol
Man i cant stop binge watching your channel!
Glad you enjoy it!
so your a toxic mood person like me ? should seen me dive in a lake for a nuclear plant , it was quite a enlightening experience
(the instructor ... "you can really enjoy diving here in the clear water" me looking at the compass spin circles due to the rebar in the concrete "i hope its rebar....")
I have a couple suggestions for ya! I think you should think about doing a video on BP Texas City, the MGPI Processing chemical disaster, T2 Labs, and the EQ hazardous waste plant disaster. I know the USCSB did videos on these, but I think it would be great for you to put your fun spin on them.
Thanks for the suggestion
@@PlainlyDifficult no problem bro. You make great content that catches the attention of your audience. It gets even better that you respond to your comments
Most apologists for dioxin have often downplayed the negative health effects it has by citing this very accident! They claim that it demonstrates that dioxin - at worst - “caused acne” (!!!).
As per usual quite on point and perfectly balanced information that is maticously researched. You are setting the bar dude. Havin grown up and lived most of my live in Basel, Switzerland, I habe experienced a fair share of global chemical company giants like the here mentioned Hoffman- La Roche, CIBA and Sandoz. Before the latter two merged into global player Novartis, Sandoz was responsible for the worst chemical accident in the cities history when on saturday Nov. 1st 1986 one of their storage facilities caught fire in the middle of the night. Contaminated draining water from the firefighter crews could not be collected properly and bled into nearby rive rhine and poisened the water and turned it red. In th following days you could observe this red streak crawl downstream towards Rotterdam like a blood poisoning crawls up an arm and killing almost every living being in the river on its way. Quite a memorable and horrible day. Do you have any plans to cover the Schweizerhall incident?
Thank you! Funny you mention Schweizerhall I'm currently researching the Sandoz Spill as we speak!
@@PlainlyDifficult If there is anything I can help with, let me know. I lived in Basel when it happened.
Yes minister is great for research
I actually live in Seveso. Now all we have left of that tragedy is a beautiful park containing toxic residue in some restricted parts (underground). A good ending to a bad story.
Edit: I sould add that I was not born yet in the 70s (I'm from the 2000s), but my parents lived here at that time and they were fortunate enough to be living in zone R.
There has also been multiple cases of house robberies in Zone A just because it was just like a fallout-like world there.
As far as I know nobody died just because of this, but for sure some people were affected.
Right now there is almost no residue left over and all of it is hundreds of meters underground in restricted areas.
Hello, I am from Seveso too. The world happens to be small, sometimes :)
I was one year old when it happened. The contaminated soil has been buried few meters deep in the same place (in sealed pools) and a park has been built over
This video has stayed in my recommended for a month. A MONTH. UA-cam is nothing if not determined to make me watch the most random things
i actually live in the neighboring town of Barlassina (which was mostly spared by the cloud) my mother always told me about the Icmesa disaster (she was 16 at the time).
i never tought that someone will cover this story which is not very famous, thank you for your work! (town name pronounciation could be improved, but i can't complain :D)
My day is always better when you upload
Completely forgot about this disaster. In my defense, the MSM didn't exactly bend over to remind me...
Another perfect episode, gaining you new patreon. Btw if you are lacking nuclear disasters to cover, first nuclear reactor in Czechoslovakia had two in two following years 76 & 77 (it was experimental reactor of czech design where fuel could be changed during the run), there were actually deads, though not from iradiation) 4 on INES Scale
Dammit I don't have a pun, what will I do now?
dont overheat and blow of "the wrong steam" to think of one? now that really makes for a toxic environment
You should look into the Chemstar incident in Stalybridge/Manchester UK. And also a near miss In Dukinfield just up the road where it was found a chemical company was manufacturing Phenol right in the middle of the town!
2 whole k of dioxin in the air?!?
That's nastier than I'd expected.
Awesome, as always, But missing is the fact that Seveso was the 'first' big industrial incident in Europe and bootstrapped a whole legislation porting that name....
Not really the first. The Coalite incident in UK in 1968 had been even worse, but the company managed to sweep it under the carpet for several years, and UK ws not into EEC in 1968.
@@neutronalchemist3241 that's why the quotes...
It's pronounced FEEN OL. It's important because "phenyl" as you're pronouncing it, is a different chemical moiety. Also. The precursor for trichlorophenol is TETRAchlorobenzene, not trichlorobenzene.
Thanks, I remember it well, and it changed regulations in Europe leading to these types of hazardous operation being very closely monitored and restricted. The "Seveso directive".
Little was known about dioxins( there are lots of different dioxins), at this stage, but they became an even more hot topic when incinerators started burning waste transformer oils containing Poly chlorinated bi phenyls, incorrect combustion produced dioxins and another major change for the chemical industry.
That thumbnail looking like the Cloverfield fan film
Props to the off duty plant supervisor who ran TOWARDS the cloud of toxic gas to stop more people from getting hurt. While the plant failed in a major way that individual deserves credit for saving lives.
Yes prime minister. greatest comedy ever
Agreed
Always enjoy your channel, thank you for enlightening me!!!🙏👍🤔
Lmao that’s the most Italian thing ever: Having a chemical plant that shuts down at 5pm and on weekends! Most plants typically run 24/7.
🤣🤣🤣 it's okay... what could go wrong?
Microwave Popcorn: "Do not leave the microwave run unattended."
Italian Chemical plant: Lets a giant vat of hazardous chemicals simmer over the weekend unattended.
Lmao if you view this channel... ALL WORLD have this problems.
ICMESA luckily was pretty small. In those years there were different town-sized plants, those worked 24/7. I remember the colums of fire from the chimneys in the night.
It was a small plant, as you can guess by the low quantity of chemicals involved. Those don't typically run 24/7, and it's commn to leave the chemicals where they are when the plant shuts down.
You deserve more views & subscribers
Thank you!
Wait, what? You were inspired by an episode of _Yes, Minister?_
An Excellent series, sir ! May I suggest more of this kind of stuff, as it is fascinating. See if you can find industrial accidents that create things such as Flourine fires ( not related to normal fires at all. More dangerous) Also possible accidents at cryo facilities where Dewars rupture and stuff. Love your work on Orphan Sources ( big scary) ☢️ and your work in general. 💎👍
I knew it when the time I saw the title, you've just been watching Yes Minister. A good idea to order the whole DVD set though. It's a comedy gold of political satire
Wow, when I saw thumbnail picture, I immediately thought about "Yes Minister" show. And indeed you referenced to it as whole inspiration for this video!
RBMK reactors don't explode
But, I see graphite in the rubble.
I like the lil liquid stirring animation
There were many problems with that Disaster. For examble you missed that the said containers for the waste from the reactor itself didnt go to incineration first. They somehow went missing and showed up later in France.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveso_disaster#Waste_from_the_cleanup
Very interesting stuff. Loved the side note, lol.
2:16 moe-lib-the-num not mollybendium
The 'D' isn't pronounced as a 'th' it's just a normal 'D''
muh-lib-duh-num
Molly-bend-ium rolls off the tongue better though ~_^ .
I was a lad on holiday in Cornwall at the time. My dad did everything to reassure us.