GP-India 24.3.99/2.spaltig Ships for Scrap
Steel and Toxic
Wastes for Asia
The health and environmental
hazards in recipient states
A fact-finding mission to the
Indian shipbreaking yards in Alang
and Bombay Authors
Dipl.-Ing. Judit Kanthak,
Andreas Bernstorff
With inputs from Nitiyanand Jayaraman
Photos
Christoph Engel/Greenpeace, (S. 6, S. 7, S. 8 m., S. 12, S. 13, S. 14, S. 16)
Andreas Bernstorff/Greenpeace, (S. 8 o., S. 11 u.)
Shailendra Yashwant (S. 11 o.)
Eberhard Weckenmann/Greenpeace (S. 8 u.)
published by
Greenpeace e.V.
Große Elbstrasse 39
22767 Hamburg, Germany
Phone: ++49(40)-30618-0,
fax: ++49(40)-30618-130
,
email: judit.kanthak@greenpeace.de;
andreas.bernstorff@greenpeace.de
March 1999 Table of contents
1
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
2
Asia the final destination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
3
Why is an old ship toxic waste? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
4
Worker exposure and environmental
contamination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
4.1
Asbestos everywhere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
4.2
When the paint comes off . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
4.3
Oil remnants in the sea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
4.4
Everything burns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
5
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Annex 1:
Sampling and analysis report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
Annex 2:
The legal situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
Annex 3:
Breaking up a ship the procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
Annex 4:
Material flows from the ships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
List of tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 1 Introduction
It is widely known and has been repeatedly
described how decommissioned ocean-going
ships are scrapped in Asian states, especially on
the Indian subcontinent. This is usually presented
as a curio: hundreds of workers taking apart
a huge ship largely by hand.
The concerns highlighted in this context have
sometimes included the abysmal working
conditions, the lack of worker health and safety
controls and the frequent accidents. By contrast,
the acute and medium to long term impacts upon
the health of workers and local residents have
aroused scarcely any interest. The authorities in
the north-west Indian state of Gujarat have
allegedly investigated the dispersal of
contaminants from the dismantled ships to the
environment. However, these data, which refer to
Alang, the largest scrap yard of the world, have
not been disclosed to the public.
Recently criticism has been voiced in some rich
OECD countries that ship owners assume no
responsibility for the often very toxic substances
long contained in their roughly 30 year old
vessels. Instead, the owners sell the ships as pure
steel to Asia, and make a good profit on this,
while fully aware that the unsuspecting people
there will be directly exposed to the hazardous
substances; fully aware, too, that the authorities
there do not meet their obligations to protect
their citizens, be it out of negligence or
impotence.
Since 1 January 1998, Greenpeace and the
environmental movement at large have a further
cause for calling attention to the illegality of
this process: Through the transposition of the
1989 "Basel Convention on the Control of
Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes
and Their Disposal" into European Union and
German waste legislation, all of the
contaminants examined in the present report
have become subject to a ban on exports to
non-OECD countries.
In the expectation the new legal situation
would give renewed initiatives to improve the
situation a higher chance of success than before,
Greenpeace International decided to tackle the
issue once again. In a first step, a mixed team
from India and Germany, in cooperation with the
international Basel Action Network, undertook a
fact-finding mission to two shipbreaking yards in
India: the Mumbai (Bombay) Scrapping Area and
the Alang Ship Breaking Yard in Gujarat state,
about 180 miles to the north-west of Bombay.
Our purpose was to make an eyewitness record,
photographically and on video, of the conditions
at these shipbreaking yards, and to make these
known to the public. We were able to take samples
of material from the ships and environmental
samples from the soil and sediments at various
locations.
However, neither the photographing and filming
nor the sampling could be rigorously systematic.
The team was under constant surveillance and was
repeatedly told to stop work and leave the place.
The environmental samples were taken directly
after the end of the continuous monsoon rains.
It must be assumed that contamination levels will
rise considerably in the course of the dry season,
then again be diluted and washed into the soil in
the next monsoon period.
Analysis of the samples reveals dramatic to
substantial workplace contamination by various
toxic heavy metals from the ship paints.
Workplace and environmental contamination by
organotin compounds (tributyl tin, TBT) from the
antifouling paints on the ship hulls was similarly
severe. Asbestos, after being stripped from the
ships without any kind of safeguards, was
omnipresent: in the working areas, on shop
counters and tipped along farming tracks. The
40,000 people working in Alang are additionally
exposed to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
(PAHs) and dioxins in their working and leisure
environments. These come from incessant, open
burning of non-recoverable wastes on the beach
this is plain to the most casual observer.
The occupational physician and Occupational
Health Officer of the German state of Bremen,
Dr. Frank Hittmann, has publicly stated in an
interview with ARD-TV (First German TV) that the
lack of safeguards in handling the various
contaminants means that every fourth worker in
Alang must be expected to contract cancer. (14)
5 6
The report uses the medical literature to
appraise the human health impacts of the lack of
safeguards in handling the materials, flame
cutting and burning the paints and wastes.
German and European occupational health and
safety regulations are contrasted with the
practices in Bombay and Alang.
We aim to show how seriously the problems are
now taken in the ships countries of origin
problems of which the Asian workers have no
inkling.
The hazards to aquatic ecosystems that proceed
from the tributyl tin (TBT) contained in the
antifouling paints of ships are an environmental
problem that, once generated, will persist for a
long time to come. Sixteen years of shipbreaking
in Alang has contaminated a previously
unpolluted region with the poorly degradable
environmental poison TBT.
We are not solely concerned with insisting on
the letter of the law, demanding that the
uncontrolled exportation of these environmental
hazards from the European Union is stopped. Our
aim is primarily to ensure that the situation in
Asia is swiftly and effectively improved.
A medium term aim is that the ships still in
service today are rapidly freed of these
contaminants, and that new ships are built as far
as possible without their use. This is a task that
goes far beyond the scope of the Basel
Convention. It concerns the entire ship industry,
and needs to be tackled more intensively by,
among others, the International Maritime
Organization (IMO), which is under the United
Nations umbrella, and the European Union and the
International Labour Organization (ILO, Geneva).
We sincerely hope that this report can make a
contribution to these efforts.
x
2 Asia - the final destination
There are about 45,000 ocean-going ships in the
world: container ships, general cargo ships, roll-
on/roll-off ships, refrigerated cargo ships, tankers,
ferries, cruise liners and special ships for research
or cable-laying warships not counted. About
700 are taken out of service every year, after an
average service life of 29 years at sea.
In the 1970s shipbreaking was still a highly
mechanized industrial operation carried out in
the berths of shipyards, mainly in Great Britain,
Taiwan, Spain, Mexico and Brazil.
Since the early 1980s, shipbreaking has been
increasingly shifted to poor Asian states. By 1993,
half of all ocean-going ships were scrapped in
China. Now, at the end of the 1990s, India has
taken first place (70%), followed by Pakistan,
Bangladesh and China. Vietnam and the
Philippines are new entrants to this business.
The annual tonnage due for scrapping is
predicted to double by the year 2005. This is
connected with massive new orders of ships in
the early 1990s, lower shipping rates due to
the Asian crisis, new safety regulations, above all
for tankers, and disarmament programmes.
Ship steel is claimed to contribute 15% to
India's annual steel production. The ship
graveyard of Chittagong is the sole 'iron ore
mine' of Bangladesh.
When a ship reaches the end of its sailing lif