Double talk.

Thursday morning, as I was getting ready to go to work, a local radio station announced that a train derailed causing a chemical spill right outside of town. The report also said that a bridge, under which the tracks ran, would have to be closed during clean up. I was a little worried, since the place I work is near that bridge, but went to work anyway. Here is the part that I find bizarre. Both the radio report I heard at home and the TV report I saw at work repeated the same phrase: "the spilled toxic chemicals pose no danger to the general public." Last time I checked, which has been a while so things might have changed, chemicals can not be both "toxic" and "harmless". To reinforce the idea that the spilled chemicals "posed no danger to the general public" a local paper printed a story about the derailment with a picture of firefighters from a nearby town dressed in white hazmat suits being hosed off by the local firefighters in yellow protective suits. 30,000 gallons were spilled, but I guess they are only dangerous to those who come into immediate contact with the spill.