space Press Releases, News Stories

INDIANS AT SHIPBREAKING YARDS FACE HEALTH HAZARDS

Agence France Presse

NEW DELHI, India, 18 February 1999 -- The lives of thousands of Indian workers at two of the world's leading shipbreaking yards are being placed in danger by exposure to powerful toxins, Greenpeace said Thursday. The workers, some as young as 17, are constantly exposed to asbestos, lead, oxygen and propane flasks, toxic vapours, arsenic, TBT vapours, and dust, the environmental lobby group said in a 23-page report. As a result they risk skin and liver cancer, paralysis and damage to their nervous systems because they work without safety equipment while scrapping condemned ships.

The report followed an investigation into health and environmental hazards at breaking yards in the western ports of Bombay and Alang. India accounts for 70 percent of scrapping of all ocean-going civilian ships, followed by Pakistan, Bangladesh and China.

Ships are broken up mainly for steel. But a wide variety of other materials from the vessels, including asbestos whose use is not banned in India, are also salvaged and recycled.

Greenpeace said some 100 shipbreakers at Alang, in the state of Gujarat, employ around 40,000 workers who live close to the work place, constantly exposed to pollutants.

"Every fourth worker in Alang must be expected to contract cancer," the report said, adding that 16 years of shipbreaking had contaminated the previously unpolluted region with low-degradable environmental poison. When Greenpeace activists visited Bombay and Alang, they were "under constant surveillance and repeatedly told to leave the place."

The report said many deaths had occurred during cutting work, including those of 50 people killed in a single gas explosion several years ago.

FAIR USE NOTICE. This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The Basel Action Network is making this article available in our efforts to advance understanding of ecological sustainability and environmental justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a `fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond `fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
More News