[dkokelley]

I'm pretty worried about this. The fallout/plume won't just be isolated to a region we can avoid or mitigate. It's in our waterways and in our air. I wouldn't be surprised if a year from now we can detect it all around the world. We might not know the full extent of the disaster for many years.

[DiggyJohnson]

My unresearched hunch is that your concern is under-appreciating how big the Earth is.

[myko]

I think they're right that it will be detectable globally in a few years if folks know what they're looking for, but I don't think it will show up meaningfully as an impact to health outcomes far outside the currently contaminated region.

[everforward]

I'd be surprised. Doing quick napkin math, there were very roughly 4.710^30 particles of vinyl chloride released. Google says there are 4.610^46 molecules of water in the ocean (I can't vouch for that). So the concentration would be something like 0.0000000001 ppm.

And that's only counting the ocean, not air or freshwater or dirt.

I don't know if that's in the realm of detectable, but I think it's certainly not significant.

The local effects could be bad, but I don't think there will be any kind of global effects.