for what it's worth, there is considerable dioxin fallout from Japanese incinerators (the Japanese don't dump their trash into the ground, they burn it). The fallout is well documented and has been the source of several law suits and legal settlements (extremely rare in Japan) by/from those living down wind. But, hey, that's what happens when you have a society the worships land and where the populus is largely immobile.

I think PCBs (and their byproducts, dioxin) are no longer used in tranformer oil. I don't know how toxic current transformer oil is, I assume it's (believed to be) safer. Of course, there may still be old transforms lurking out there waiting for their chance to spew toxins. I think a lot more PCBs have been released from transformer manufacturing and disposal sites than from explosions.

Incidentally, the reason PCBs were popular for filling transformers were that they are:

 - Electric insulators
 - Decent conductors of heat
 - Non-flamable

I wonder what the toxic fallout from a transformer explosion is? I mean they're full of dioxions and stuff, right? Personally I wouldn't want to be anywhere near a transformer explosion. In fact, if a transformer blew up in my neighborhood, I'd probably think about moving.

Edited by author 05-19-2003 11:29 AM
there is no story. i just thought the title of the paper and the explosion video are cool and i want to link to greg leyh's page because there's more neat stuff in there. :-)

in fact the other videos and images on this site are interesting too: http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm

Yes, what is the story here? Where? What? Why? & When?

Very cool. But what's the story here? Where? What? Why?

high-voltage + fire + video camera == l33tness

awesome