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by Frederick Noronha, Environmental News Service

Once a ship reaches the end of its sailing life, it is offered to brokers in Hamburg, London or New York. They, in turn, pass it on to shipbreaking businesses in Asia. Some 400 to 500 ocean-going ships are scrapped in India every year.

A new report released in India by the environmental campaign group Greenpeace found that Alang, in the northwestern Indian state of Gujarat, has become the largest scrap yard in the world. Hundreds of workers can be seen "taking apart a huge ship largely by hand," the report said.

"People working at the scrapping yards in Alang and Bombay are exposed daily to free asbestos fibres and vapours and dusts which contain heavy metals, arsenic, tributyl tin, polycyclic romatic hydrocarbons and possibly also dioxin," Greenpeace said.

Under such working conditions, the incidence of cancer is expected to be 25 percent, according to occupational and industrial physician, Dr. Frank Hittman, quoted in the report.

Heavy metals, asbestos dust and poorly degradable pollutants from the combustion processes are also contaminating people living in the neighbourhoods of the shipbreaking facilities.

"What first strikes a visitor to the shipbreaking yards in Alang and Bomby is the open, careless handling of asbestos without any kind of safeguards," said the report. Asbestos could be seen "everywhere," on the ships, next to the ships, on the beach, in big bowls on the heads of women workers and on uncontrolled dumps on the land behind the yards.

The environmental pollution is "generally very apparent," the report found, both in Bombay and in Alang, the two locations in coastal western India, which have become havens for shipbreaking activity. But, so far, the acute and medium-to-long term impact of shipbreaking on the health of workers and local residents has aroused scarcely any interest.

"Even if activities were stopped at these sites, the high concentration of TBT (tributyl tin) in the marine sediment and thus the food chain will remain in the next 10-20 years," the international campaign group's report warned.

Greenpeace found that:

• Insulating material removed manually in Bombay, which frequently contains asbestos, is collected by women workers who take it on large bowls on their heads to dump into the sea.
• Fuel remnants and bilge oil are pumped directly into the sea in Bombay. At Alang, leftover oil is often burned in open fires "in order to prevent pollution of the sea."
• Workers can be seen stripping blue asbestos from a ship and piling it into bags with their bare hands, with no protective clothing.
• In parts of the Mumbai (Bombay) port scrapping area, the actual beach has disappeared under a three foot high layer of waste.
• One saying in Alang is: "Every day one ship, every day one dead." The reported number of deaths due to accidents at work ranges between 40 and 400 a year. Many people are fatally hit by falling steel parts. The most frequent causes of deaths are explosions and fires on the ships.
• Under Indian law, the imports of toxic waste from OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries and shipbreaking work in tidal ocean zones are prohibited, but the use of asbestos is not yet banned.

Tributyl tin is a hormone disrupter. In November 1998, the International Maritime Organisation declared itself ready to see "a ban on application of organotins used as biocides in anti-fouling paints by 2003 and a ban on its presence on vessels by 2008."

Organotins accumulate in the human body and are distributed to varying extends in the blood, liver, kidneys and brain.

Some 700 ships are taken out of service every year, after an average service life of 29 years at sea. At least 95 percent of the mass of an ocean-going ship consists of high-quality steel.

Recovering the steel is the main purpose of dismantling the ships. The remaining five percent made up of non-ferrous metal components, paints and coatings, insulation and sealing material, electric cabling, cabin walls, decorative tiling, floor coverings that must be dealt with. These materials are often hazardous waste. In a cargo vessel weighing 10,000 tonnes, this five percent equals 500 tonnes.

These materials are firmly installed or even inseperably bonded to the valuable iron on the ships. They must be stripped and disposed of while breaking the ship. Ship fuel remnants, bilge oil, spent machine and gear and lubricating oils, insulation and heat transfer fluids are also on board in considerable quantities and need to be removed.

In the 1970s, shipbreaking was still a highly mechanized industrial operation. It was carried out in the berths of shipyards, mainly in the UK, Taiwan, Spain, Mexico and Brazil. Since the early 1980s, shipbreaking has been increasingly shifted to poorer Asian states. By 1993, half of all ocean-going ships were scrapped in China. Now India handles 70 percent of the shipbreaking, followed by Pakistan, Bangladesh and China. Vietnam and the Philippines are new entrants into the business.

Annual tonnage due for scrapping is predicted to double by the year 2005 because of massive new orders of ships in the early 1990s, lower shipping rates due to the Asian crisis, new safety regulations specially for tankers, and disarmament programmes.

"Ship steel is claimed to contribute 15 percent to India's annual steel production. The ship graveyard of Chittagong is the sole 'iron ore mine' of Bangladesh," notes the Greenpeace report.

In the 1970s, in the absence of substance bans, materials were chosen based on the function intended. Ships were not to burn, so large amounts of asbestos were used.

To be highly visible in poor light and fog, bright colours were needed. To avoid rusting, anticorrosives like lead oxide and zinc chromate were used. Antifouling paints were used to avoid the hull from being overgrown by algae, molluscs and barnacles which could create frictional drag and raise fuel consumption.

Ships being scrapped today were built in the 1970s, when the health hazards of carcinogenic asbestos were already known. Still, materials containing asbestos were not only used for the insulation of the hot parts in the engine room and the hot exhaust pipes, but for wall cladding and cable insulation. Countries like Germany phased out the use of asbestos between 1986 and 1990, Greenpeace notes.