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iamnotazombie44 t1_jcgak77 wrote

Reply to comment by 3226 in Open-source tool from MIT’s Senseable City Lab lets people check air quality, cheaply. by chrisdh79

This is all tragically true. I'm a chemist from across the country and I was crying for those people and that area the day I read the manifest. That area is fucked.

I wanted to report that you can detect these compounds an organo-halide detector, they are relatively cheap sensors to detect refrigerants. They work on detecting the X - C bond, where X is F, Cl, Be, or I.

It's a pretty common for refrigeration people and in water testing. They are not cheap, but not prohibitive either.

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findingmike t1_jcgypv9 wrote

Are the compounds going to stay around a long time?

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iamnotazombie44 t1_jchk5kr wrote

Yeah, they are.

Vinyl chloride has basically permeated the entire town. It will acidify the soil while releasing toxic phosgene and carcinogeninic vinyl compounds as it breaks down for years to come.

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