[culi]

Context from another article:

> Cars involved in the derailment contained vinyl chloride, combustible liquids, butyl acrylate, benzene residue cars (railroad cars that previously contained benzene,” the release stated, “and nonhazardous materials such as wheat, plastic pellets, malt liquors and lube oil.”

[ta988]

Some lube oils are extremely toxic when burned. And there may be reactions between the various chemicals and their degradatoon products. Portable detectors will not be able to detect or quantify many of those. Only more advanced methods like Raman, gas and liquid chromatography with various detectors and mass spectrometry can tell more. And I have yet to see a report using any of those.

[fuzzfactor]

>butyl acrylate

Affectionately known as Brutal Acrylate.

In scientific terminology, that's some nasty smelling shit. Toxic too.

If there's enough of it spilled you could smell minuscule amounts a mile away easier than an instrument could get a valid reading though.

It's one of those.

The odor threshold of volatile acrylates is orders of magnitude lower than other flammable toxic chemicals like methanol, but the instrumental detectability of acrylates is not really any more sensitive than regular low-odor chemicals by comparison.

IOW the instrument is better at detecting low-odor chemicals than your nose is, but your nose is more sensitive to things that have a very strong characteristic odor like acrylates.