![]() ![]() ![]() We could solve the problem of sulphur pollution by switching to cleaner fuels. “A lot of the discharge is toxic and contains all these nasty substances,” says Leemans, adding: “It’s the whole cocktail together that makes it even worse.”Īn IMO spokesperson, Natasha Brown, says scrubbers were developed as an “equivalent” to comply with air pollution limits and the IMO is now looking at the wider issue in response to concerns. These have been linked to several types of cancers and reproductive dysfunction in marine mammals, including southern resident orca in the north Pacific and beluga whales. What most concern experts, though, are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Meanwhile, a Belgian study found that scrubber discharges contain high concentrations of metals such as nickel, copper and chromium, which all devastate marine ecosystems. The Swedish Environmental Research Institute found that washwater from North Sea ships has “severe toxic effects” on zooplankton, which cod, herring and other species feed on. Aside from being acidic, scrubbers contain heavy metals that accumulate in marine food chains. Roughly 10 gigatonnes – 10,000,000,000 tonnes – of scrubber washwater are discharged into oceans annually, according to an International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) report on global discharge waste – just less than the total weight of all the cargo transported by ships in a year. Most vessels use an open-loop system, meaning that instead of holding waste in a tank to be disposed of at dedicated port facilities, the ships directly dump the acidic wash – up to 100,000 times more acidic than seawater – overboard, says Eelco Leemans, an Arctic marine researcher. Washwater from ships in the North Sea was found to have ‘severe toxic effects’ on zooplankton, the tiny crustaceans that are food for cod, herring and other fish. Scrubbers, which sit in the funnels, or exhaust stacks, of ships, use seawater to spray or “scrub” the sulphur dioxide pollutants from the engine’s exhaust. “It’s been a loophole for industry to continue burning the cheapest, dirtiest fuels,” says Lucy Gilliam, of Seas at Risk, an association of European environmental organisations. The scrubber pays for itself within a year. The cost of buying and fitting a scrubber is £1.5m to £5m, whereas cleaner fuel is £250-£400 a tonne. Scrubbers have proved to be the cheapest way to do so. To meet the target, it urged the global shipping fleet to switch to low-sulphur fuel.īut it also allowed for “equivalent” compliance measures, as long as ships reduced their emissions. In January 2020, the IMO – the United Nations body overseeing shipping – announced a new global sulphur cap of 0.5%, reduced from 3.5%. The race to install scrubbers only began recently. “The issue is that more ships are going to be installing scrubbers, and so the problems are predicted to get worse.” “The writing has been on the wall for many years with scrubbers and their environmental implications,” says Andrew Dumbrille, adviser for the Clean Arctic Alliance, a coalition of environmental organisations working to protect the polar region from the impact of shipping. It is a trade-off: clear the skies but contaminate the waters. About 10,000,000,000 tonnes of scrubber washwater discharge enters the oceans a year. A container ship at Tsing Yi port, Hong Kong. ![]()
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