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Greenpeace accuses shipping industry of profiting from poison

Fri 04 October 2002, Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS: Greenpeace activists boarded a ship in Antwerp harbour this morning to investigate whether or not it contains hazardous materials and to start preparing a preliminary public inventory of findings. The environmental organisation and an independent asbestos expert (1) took samples of the Greek owned ship, the 'Silver Ray', because they are concerned the vessel is about to be exported as scrap to a shipbreaking yard in Asia without first being cleaned of dangerous toxic materials. (2)

"Ship owners must provide public inventories of hazardous materials on their ships as a matter of routine and guarantee dangerous substances are safely removed before vessels are scrapped. By failing to do this, they're exposing thousands of workers in Asia directly to poisons and causing catastrophic environmental problems. In fact they even profit from this practice which is totally unacceptable," said Greenpeace campaigner, Frank Petersen.

The 'Silver Ray' is one of hundreds of ships that are sold to Asian scrap yards every year. A new Greenpeace study released today (3) weighs up the shipping industry's economic gain from selling ships for scrap and the human and environmental costs of breaking contaminated ships. It concludes that shipping companies earn more than a billion US dollars from selling scrap vessels every year but do not spend a penny on protecting people's health and the environmental by cleaning their vessels of hazardous waste. Costs of breaking contaminated ships borne by workers and people living near shipbreaking yards include loss of livelihood, cleaning up polluted sediments, asbestos exposure liabilities and death or disease caused by exposure to toxic substances.

"By selling ships as scrap to Asia, ship owners can conveniently divest themselves of any responsibility of the environmental hazards that their ships contain. If they spent a fraction of their profits on cleaning their vessels of poisons before they are scrapped, thousands of lives would be saved and the Asian environment protected," added Petersen.

The results of this study will be presented to the delegates of to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) meeting in London next week. The IMO will discuss the necessity of mandatory guidelines for ship owners to stop the pollution associated with shipbreaking.

"A strong and mandatory framework must to be set up by the international community to make sure ship owners are held accountable and liable for their ships and any hazardous materials they contain," concluded Petersen.