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GREENPEACE: SHIPBREAKING POSES HAZARD TO WORKERS

Associated Press

NEW DELHI, India, 18 February 1999 -- One in 4 workers at shipbreaking yards in India are susceptible to cancer because of constant exposure to contamination and hazardous waste, a Greenpeace report said Thursday. The international environmental group released a report Ships for Scrap: Steel and Toxic Wastes for Asia presenting technical data on toxic contamination at shipbreaking yards in Bombay and Alang in western India. Trade unions have long complained about the occupational hazards faced by more than 40,000 workers in the shipyards. The Alang shipyard strips more than half the world's decommissioned ships for recycling.

''This report proves that ships do contain hazardous substances ... and that workers do indeed suffer as a result,'' said Nityanand Jayaram, a spokesman for Greenpeace.

Improving work conditions in Alang were difficult because workers were unregistered, unorganized and without the benefit of labor laws, said Jayaram. Workers, mostly poor migrants, have no knowledge of, or protection from, the dangerous substances they are forced to handle.

During a normal work day, barehanded workers handle toxic heavy metals, potentially cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and asbestos. All are banned under the 1989 Basel Convention, which regulates the traffic of toxic waste, the study said.

As a result, one-fourth of the workers are likely to contract cancer, according to Dr. Frank Hittal, occupational health officer of the German state of Bremen, who compared Alang with shipbreaking activities in Germany in the 1970's.

Government figures say 40 workers die every year in Alang from accidents, but trade organizations say the figure is 10 times that high. Most are caused by falling ship parts or fires, the report said.

Greenpeace has demanded that ship owners and operators make an inventory of toxins aboard all aging ships and place the work under the supervision of trained technicians.

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