Danish report: time to shape up shipping

A recent report commissioned by the Danish government has estimated a single large container ship can do the same damage to human health as up to 50 million cars.

The Guardian reports that the study, working off engine size, fuel quality and running time data, concluded that of the world's 90,000 ocean-going cargo vessels, just 15 of the biggest generate the same quantities of carcinogenic and asthma-causing substances as the world's entire automotive population of around 760 million cars.

This, it says, is thanks largely to the quality of the fuel oil used in their gargantuan engines, which gives off 2000 times the sulphur emissions of the automotive-grade diesel fuel used in Europe and the US.

Over a 15,000 km year, an average car emits around 101g of sulphur oxide gases (SOx). By comparison, a large container vessel's diesel engine, weighing well over 2000 tonnes and with a typical power output of about 80 megawatts, can be expected to put in about 280 24-hour days a year -- enough, the report estimates, to emit about 5200 tonnes of SOx. Around 70 per cent of this will be emitted close enough to coastlines to affect the health of nearby populations.

Between 18 and 30 per cent of all the world's nitrogen oxide (NOx) pollution and 9 per cent of the global sulphur oxide (SOx) pollution is attributable to shipping.

With current estimates attributing 60,000 US deaths and healthcare costs in the order of US$330 billion a year to shipping pollution in the US alone, the Obama administration has already enacted legislation imposing a 360 km low-emission buffer zone along US coastlines.

The US EPA estimates that, combined with new air quality standards cutting particulate emissions by 85 per cent, fuel sulphur by 98 per cent and NOx emissions by 80 per cent, the measure is likely to save more than 8000 lives a year.

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