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Where ships come to die
While the business is a profitable one for many Asian workers, it's also a deadly one.
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 29, 2006
ALANG, India - When the big ships come to Asia to die, they often take lives with them. Upendra Shethi knows. He was one of an army of laborers hired by an Indian ship-breaking yard to strip the 50-year-old China Sea Discovery for scrap four months ago. The ship suddenly caught fire, burning at least five men alive and injuring 15. "In a matter of five minutes, the entire ship was in flames and there was complete chaos in the yard," the 29-year-old Indian recalls. The conditions that so quickly turned the Chinese- and Canadian-owned luxury liner into a deathtrap have long been familiar along India's grimy west coast beaches. Now they are stirring a worldwide controversy that has stung the Indian government into taking action and led to the drafting of an international agreement to police the industry. But Greenpeace and other advocacy groups say the remedies aren't enough. Playing out in places such as this seaside town of Alang is a little known drama of modern consumer life. The ships that come here on their final voyage have spent decades carrying holidaymakers on cruises or delivering the cars and bicycles, microwave ovens and DVD players, sneakers and sweat shirts, coal and oil - all the ingredients of daily life. Now, rusty and barnacled, they are rammed ashore and quickly cannibalized for every speck of recyclable material. These older ships, some as tall as 15-story buildings and as long as several football fields, are not broken up in the West because they are full of dangerous materials such as asbestos that would not pass health standards. So Asia has become a cheap alternative. Ship-breaking is done by uneducated migrants with little safety equipment who earn a dollar or two a day - but twice as much as they could make at home. "It's like hell on earth," said Paul Bailey, a ship-scrapping expert with the U.N.'s International Labor Organization. "Working conditions are dangerous. You're dismantling the ship and taking it apart. It's a moving target and things are changing all the time." The ships are run ashore at high tide and laborers clamber up the anchor chains to strip it of everything from furniture to engines, using blowtorches and bare hands. Amid the clanging of hammers and the smell of burning metal, workers let huge chunks of steel plunge several stories to the ground. Dozens of men drag slabs of steel weighing hundreds of pounds to trucks. Within a few months the ship is piles of scrap. Conditions are worse in Bangladesh, activists say. There, women recycle asbestos by hand, barefoot workers stand knee-deep in oil, medical facilities are almost nonexistent and children are often used as laborers, they say. Indian ship-breakers say activists exaggerate the dangers, and claim accidents have dropped significantly. "Nowadays, we are getting too much harassment from the NGOs and the government," said Haresh Parmar of Shiv Ship Breaking Co. "We are doing nothing wrong. We are running a healthy recycling industry that provides many jobs."
SHIP HAZARDS Some hazardous compounds found on older ships sent to Asia to be recycled:
ASBESTOS: Tons of asbestos was used in ships built before 1980 and can be found in the insulation of doors, walls and engines. Prolonged exposure to asbestos fibers can lead to asbestosis, which can be fatal, or mesothelioma, a rare, fast-moving cancer that attacks the lining of the lungs. POLYCHLORINATED BIPHENYLS: This industrial compound is in gaskets, insulation materials and electrical components. Long-term exposure to PCBs can cause cancer and liver damage.
TRIBUTYLTIN: Tributyltin acts as a nerve toxin accumulating in the blood, liver, kidneys and brain. It is found in antifouling agents on the hulls of ships and workers most often inhale it when cutting apart a boat's exterior.
TOXIC METALS: A ship's structure and wiring is full of lead, mercury and cadmium. Long-term exposure can lead to acute poisoning, cancer and death.
[Last modified June 29, 2006, 06:54:32]
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