If you have ever driven behind a large diesel truck you have experienced the oily smell and the thick black smoke that leaves the air a brownish color. It's easy to see the cumulative effect of this exhaust on a busy highway. But there's s…
If you have ever driven behind a large diesel truck you have experienced the oily smell and the thick black smoke that leaves the air a brownish color. It's easy to see the cumulative effect of this exhaust on a busy highway. But there's something much worse out there -- cargo ships!
Almost everything bought in America is made in Asia. This requires a constant procession of cargo ships crossing the oceans of the world. Some of these cargo ships are huge -- a quarter mile long -- and they have engines in them as big as a house [below].
As ships get bigger, the pollution is getting worse. The most staggering statistic of all is that just 16 of the world's largest ships can produce as much lung-clogging sulphur pollution as all the world's cars put together!
These super-vessels use as much fuel as small power stations, but unlike power stations, they can burn the cheapest, filthiest, high-sulphur fuel -- the thick residues left behind in refineries after the lighter liquids have been taken. The stuff nobody on land is allowed to use.
There are now an estimated 100,000 ships on the seas, and the fleet is growing fast as goods are ferried in vast quantities from Asian industrial powerhouses to consumers in Europe and North America. The recession has barely dented the trade. Super-ships from the Far East, such as the Emma Maersk and her seven sisters Evelyn, Eugen, Estelle, Ebba, Eleonora, Elly and Edith Maersk can carry up to 14,000 full-size containers on their regular routes from China to Europe and America.
Emma -- dubbed SS Santa by the media -- brought Christmas presents to Europe in October and is now en route from Algeciras in Spain to Yantian in southern China, carrying containers full of our waste paper, plastic and electronics for recycling. It burns marine heavy fuel, or 'bunker fuel', which leaves behind a trail of potentially lethal chemicals like sulphur and smoke that has been linked to lung problems, inflammation, cancer and heart disease.
James C..
