Julio Godoy
PARIS, Jan 31 2006 (IPS) – The asbestos-contaminated French military aircraft carrier Clemenceau being towed to the Indian scrap-yard Alang for dismantling is among thousands of obsolete ships containing hazardous materials that need to be disposed of.
These ships, which have to be decommissioned following new regulations, represent an enormous health and environmental challenge for both the industrialised and the developing world, experts say.
Among these ships is the SS Norway, formerly a cruise liner known as the SS France built in a French yard in 1962. According to the environmental organisation Greenpeace, the SS Norway, now anchored in a harbour in Malaysia, contains about 1,000 tonnes of asbestos..
Unofficial sources say the Norway, until recently owned by the private cruise liner company Star Cruises, has been sold to a scrap merchant from Bangladesh, and is expected to be dismantled there later this year.
Asbestos, a mineral fibre which can be easily inhaled, is known to cause cancer and asbestosis, a fatal lung scarring. It was in common use earlier for insulation in construction, and as a fire retardant. Asbestos has been banned in practically all industrialised countries for at least a decade.
According to an estimate by the French association of victims of asbestos (Andeva), about 3,000 people continue to die every year in France of contamination with the material. Andeva predicts up to 100,000 deaths from asbestos-caused diseases by 2025 in France, and up to 600,000 in Western Europe.
According to the World Health Organisation, asbestos-related diseases kill some 100,000 people a year.
Asbestos is still commonly found in older homes, in pipe and furnace insulation materials, asbestos shingles, millboard, textured paints and other coating materials, and floor tiles. It is found also in practically all ships built before the early 1980s.
Until the early 1980s, there was a massive, superfluous use of asbestos in the shipbuilding industry, Julien Le Calvar, a retired labour safety and hygiene worker from the French shipyard Lorient told IPS. The shipyards could have reduced the amounts of the material to a minimum, but they used it everywhere, even there where it was good for nothing.
Bruno Aoustin, another retired worker from a French shipyard, agrees. All French ships more than 20 years old contain tonnes of asbestos. Only in the 1980s was use of the material reduced, but then it was too late, he told IPS.
It is a similar situation in the naval industry the world over. Due to its resistance to heat, asbestos was considered until the late 1970s to be the wonder material that would hinder all kinds of unwanted fires in the ships engines.
From the thousands of asbestos-contaminated ships around the world, Greenpeace has listed the 50 that need most to be decommissioned in the coming months. This list includes several cruise liners, a dozen oil and chemicals tankers, and several container ships.
Greenpeace has also listed the ships recently scrapped at yards in developing countries such as Turkey, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China.
Every year some 600 to 700 large sea vessels are taken out of service and towed to scrap yards in Asia, Yannick Jadot who heads the anti-asbestos campaign at Greenpeace told IPS. This represents several millions of tonnes of material to be dismantled, including thousands of tonnes of hazard waste, including asbestos.
Jadot said that until 1970 most of the dismantling of ships was carried out in naval yards in Europe and North America. But after a tightening of labour and health rules protecting workers and environment, the industry was outsourced to developing countries, especially in Asia.
The number of ships that need to be dismantled has risen rapidly after the phasing out of single-hull tankers ordered in 2003. The International Maritime Organisation made that recommendation after several single-hull oil tankers broke down and contaminated the sea.
