7 ms·

The toxic tide of ship breaking

111 points by whalesalad 4y ago

just_steve_h 4y ago
The author Paolo Bacigalupi has a great sci-fi story set in the Gulf Coast of the near future, centering on a teenage boy who works as the titular Ship Breaker [1]. Even though it is technically “young adult” fiction, I found plenty to enjoy for this middle-aged reader. His novel The Water Knife is also excellent and more “grown up.” [1] https://windupstories.com/books/ship-breaker/ https://windupstories.com/books/ship-breaker/
- kristianp 4y ago
  I enjoyed ship breaker too. Didn't realise it was the first of a trilogy. The windup girl was good too, although I found the coal power and other steampunk stuff a little distracting.
- Panino 4y ago
  +1000 for The Water Knife, just excellent. Bacigalupi wrote another book called Pump Six and Other Stories. If you enjoy scrappunk then the story "The People of Sand and Slag" from that collection is pretty good. I don't know the solution to modern ship breaking, but I think we have it in us to be better. We don't want to be the people of sand and slag. Let's instead be characters from a Becky Chambers novel.
jmclnx 4y ago
Talk about a dystopian industry. Working conditions look very bad. And from the pics, the workers are all barefooted, they must get lots of injuries from scrap metal all over the beach.
aziaziazi 4y ago
Does anyone have reliable data on this ? The articles states Alang ships breaking currently employed 15k people for 75% of global market. En Wikipedia source [0] says 30% for 2020 and hope for 60 in the future. 0 https://m.economictimes.com/industry/transportation/shipping-/-transport/india-eyes-60-per-cent-share-of-global-ship-recycling-business-higher-gdp-contribution-mandaviya/articleshow/72964082.cms https://m.economictimes.com/industry/transportation/shipping...
- luhn 4y ago
  The article does not state Alang breaks 75% of ships, it says "about 75% of [ships] end up in one of the three beaches in South Asia." Presumably these three beaches are Alang, India; Gadani, Pakistan; and Chittagong, Bangladesh mentioned earlier in the article.
  - aziaziazi 4y ago
    Didn’t read wisely, thank to point this out.
Joe8Bit 4y ago
I visited Chittagong a decade or so ago (as part of a non-profit working with child workers) and I can only emphasise what a visceral and horrifying thing this kind of ship breaking is to witness. 10,000's of people (as young as 6/7) working 24/7 in conditions that bear absolutely no respect for their health or safety. One of the most morally repugnant parts of the Western legal system is the creation of the labyrinthine corporate structures used to to protect the ship owners for any liability as part of their ships being broken.
- version_five 4y ago
  Is it more horrifying than them starving to death though or doing some worse job? I agree the conditions sound horrible, but it's still bringing jobs and money. Is making it illegal or uneconomical going to result in a better quality of life for the people that work there and their families?
  - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
    Right? Like those people in China who were so happy to break, split, sort and burn the plastic waste we used to send them back in the day. Why don’t they want it anymore? They should have been grateful. At least they had jobs. Otherwise who knows what they would have been doing! /s
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - zizee 4y ago
      This is not what the grandparent is saying. The typical situation is not that people are forced to do the work. We're not talking about slavery* here. They are doing it because they see it as their "best option". By stopping it, the result is their "best option" is taken away from them, and they have to go do the next "best option". You could keep saying "this is inhuman, let's stop it from happening", but the effect is just making it worse and worse. Instead, better options should be provided. That's the real solution, but it's a whole lot harder to implement than the knee jerk response of stopping an activity. edit to preempt ridiculous interpretations of my words: This is assuming slavery is not the case. If slavery is involved, it is a different situation to what i am talking about.
metadat 4y ago
You can actually see it on Google Earth if you put in the coordinates for the city of Alang in the Gulf of Khambhat: 21°23'37"N 72°10'40"E It's an enormous operation, and there is a large trauma medical center nearby. Also, the Gulf of Khambhat is a remarkably disgusting shade of brown. https://goo.gl/maps/Tk2sqMP6aHFVME1BA https://goo.gl/maps/Tk2sqMP6aHFVME1BA (warning: Maps is not as good as Google Earth view, especially on mobile) > even the asbestos will be resold This is a surprise. Who's in the market for some second hand asbestos?
- lippihom 4y ago
  Interesting - you can actually go inside one of the ships with Google Street View: https://www.google.com/maps/@21.3919514,72.1752099,3a,75y,124.11h,84.57t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAF1QipNV7HH7lMwcnQ50KxMbM9FbjInoE25pLmP_E1ni!2e10!3e12!7i6080!8i3040 https://www.google.com/maps/@21.3919514,72.1752099,3a,75y,12...
  - metadat 4y ago
    Holy cow, that's surprising. Does street view take user submissions or how is this possible?
- hummus_bae 4y ago
  [dead]
- literalAardvark 4y ago
  They're probably putting it in climbing chalk or something.
  - 83 4y ago
    Theyre still allowed to put it in brake pads in the US.
    - literalAardvark 4y ago
      Wow, that's been banned for two decades here...
SoftTalker 4y ago
Lots of video of these operations on YouTube. Some of it is shot clandestinely because the ship breakers don’t want the working conditions to be public.
ilovecurl 4y ago
Photographer Edward Burtynski has taken astounding photos of this stuff: https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/photographs/shipbreaking https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/photographs/shipbre...
ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
>This website uses cookies and similar technologies to deliver its services, to analyse and improve performance and to provide personalised content and advertising. Information about your use of this website will be shared with Google and other third parties. Read our privacy policy. That's... not how that works. So, archive link: https://archive.is/hAaYD https://archive.is/hAaYD
amrb 4y ago
Why waste time.. when you can sink it in the sea :P https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-sinks-rusting-old-aircraft-carrier-atlantic-2023-02-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-sinks-rusting-...
- jojobas 4y ago
  Apart from liquids that can be pumped out, is there much in terms of environmental hazard on an average ship? Or just a bunch of slowly corroding metal?
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    The article mentions heavy metals and asbestos, at the minimum.
    - jojobas 4y ago
      Is any of that known to leech out to sea water in amounts dangerous to anything, or at least significant relative to natural trace content? (Pretty sure it doesn't)
      - woodruffw 4y ago
        Probably not asbestos, but lead and other heavy-metal leaching would probably depend on local water conditions.
        jojobas 4y ago
        Where would these be used in an average ship, or any ship in particular? Lead is naturally found in sea water within 2-30 ppb. To raise global lead concentration by 1 ppb you need to dump a few billion tons of lead. It's often said that solution to pollution is dilution.
        dan-robertson 4y ago
fnord77 4y ago
> ‘When you’re torch-cutting a vessel, the anti-fouling paints, which contain large amounts of heavy metals, will also heat up and release toxic fumes,’ Jenssen adds. Anti-fouling paints contain copper.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  Copper is a heavy metal and makes lots of toxic compounds.
mjevans 4y ago
After thinking about this for a while the answer I've come up with is to remove the bottom from the market. Robots. Robots are the only answer because when there's a profit to be made some crook will figure out a place it's legal to make it. So I guess robots or ending capitalism. Though I've heard the latter devolved into abuse of power rather than money in the major example that comes to my mind.

111 points by whalesalad 4y ago

The author Paolo Bacigalupi has a great sci-fi story set in the Gulf Coast of the near future, centering on a teenage boy who works as the titular Ship Breaker [1]. Even though it is technically “young adult” fiction, I found plenty to enjoy for this middle-aged reader. His novel The Water Knife is also excellent and more “grown up.” [1] https://windupstories.com/books/ship-breaker/ https://windupstories.com/books/ship-breaker/

kristianp 4y ago
I enjoyed ship breaker too. Didn't realise it was the first of a trilogy. The windup girl was good too, although I found the coal power and other steampunk stuff a little distracting.
Panino 4y ago
+1000 for The Water Knife, just excellent. Bacigalupi wrote another book called Pump Six and Other Stories. If you enjoy scrappunk then the story "The People of Sand and Slag" from that collection is pretty good. I don't know the solution to modern ship breaking, but I think we have it in us to be better. We don't want to be the people of sand and slag. Let's instead be characters from a Becky Chambers novel.

jmclnx 4y ago

Talk about a dystopian industry. Working conditions look very bad. And from the pics, the workers are all barefooted, they must get lots of injuries from scrap metal all over the beach.

aziaziazi 4y ago

Does anyone have reliable data on this ? The articles states Alang ships breaking currently employed 15k people for 75% of global market. En Wikipedia source [0] says 30% for 2020 and hope for 60 in the future. 0 https://m.economictimes.com/industry/transportation/shipping-/-transport/india-eyes-60-per-cent-share-of-global-ship-recycling-business-higher-gdp-contribution-mandaviya/articleshow/72964082.cms https://m.economictimes.com/industry/transportation/shipping...

luhn 4y ago
The article does not state Alang breaks 75% of ships, it says "about 75% of [ships] end up in one of the three beaches in South Asia." Presumably these three beaches are Alang, India; Gadani, Pakistan; and Chittagong, Bangladesh mentioned earlier in the article.
- aziaziazi 4y ago
  Didn’t read wisely, thank to point this out.

Joe8Bit 4y ago

I visited Chittagong a decade or so ago (as part of a non-profit working with child workers) and I can only emphasise what a visceral and horrifying thing this kind of ship breaking is to witness. 10,000's of people (as young as 6/7) working 24/7 in conditions that bear absolutely no respect for their health or safety. One of the most morally repugnant parts of the Western legal system is the creation of the labyrinthine corporate structures used to to protect the ship owners for any liability as part of their ships being broken.

version_five 4y ago
Is it more horrifying than them starving to death though or doing some worse job? I agree the conditions sound horrible, but it's still bringing jobs and money. Is making it illegal or uneconomical going to result in a better quality of life for the people that work there and their families?
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  Right? Like those people in China who were so happy to break, split, sort and burn the plastic waste we used to send them back in the day. Why don’t they want it anymore? They should have been grateful. At least they had jobs. Otherwise who knows what they would have been doing! /s
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - zizee 4y ago
    This is not what the grandparent is saying. The typical situation is not that people are forced to do the work. We're not talking about slavery* here. They are doing it because they see it as their "best option". By stopping it, the result is their "best option" is taken away from them, and they have to go do the next "best option". You could keep saying "this is inhuman, let's stop it from happening", but the effect is just making it worse and worse. Instead, better options should be provided. That's the real solution, but it's a whole lot harder to implement than the knee jerk response of stopping an activity. edit to preempt ridiculous interpretations of my words: This is assuming slavery is not the case. If slavery is involved, it is a different situation to what i am talking about.

metadat 4y ago

You can actually see it on Google Earth if you put in the coordinates for the city of Alang in the Gulf of Khambhat: 21°23'37"N 72°10'40"E It's an enormous operation, and there is a large trauma medical center nearby. Also, the Gulf of Khambhat is a remarkably disgusting shade of brown. https://goo.gl/maps/Tk2sqMP6aHFVME1BA https://goo.gl/maps/Tk2sqMP6aHFVME1BA (warning: Maps is not as good as Google Earth view, especially on mobile) > even the asbestos will be resold This is a surprise. Who's in the market for some second hand asbestos?

lippihom 4y ago
Interesting - you can actually go inside one of the ships with Google Street View: https://www.google.com/maps/@21.3919514,72.1752099,3a,75y,124.11h,84.57t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAF1QipNV7HH7lMwcnQ50KxMbM9FbjInoE25pLmP_E1ni!2e10!3e12!7i6080!8i3040 https://www.google.com/maps/@21.3919514,72.1752099,3a,75y,12...
- metadat 4y ago
  Holy cow, that's surprising. Does street view take user submissions or how is this possible?
hummus_bae 4y ago
[dead]
literalAardvark 4y ago
They're probably putting it in climbing chalk or something.
- 83 4y ago
  Theyre still allowed to put it in brake pads in the US.
  - literalAardvark 4y ago
    Wow, that's been banned for two decades here...

SoftTalker 4y ago

Lots of video of these operations on YouTube. Some of it is shot clandestinely because the ship breakers don’t want the working conditions to be public.

ilovecurl 4y ago

Photographer Edward Burtynski has taken astounding photos of this stuff: https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/photographs/shipbreaking https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/photographs/shipbre...

ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago

>This website uses cookies and similar technologies to deliver its services, to analyse and improve performance and to provide personalised content and advertising. Information about your use of this website will be shared with Google and other third parties. Read our privacy policy. That's... not how that works. So, archive link: https://archive.is/hAaYD https://archive.is/hAaYD

amrb 4y ago

Why waste time.. when you can sink it in the sea :P https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-sinks-rusting-old-aircraft-carrier-atlantic-2023-02-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-sinks-rusting-...

jojobas 4y ago
Apart from liquids that can be pumped out, is there much in terms of environmental hazard on an average ship? Or just a bunch of slowly corroding metal?
- woodruffw 4y ago
  The article mentions heavy metals and asbestos, at the minimum.
  - jojobas 4y ago
    Is any of that known to leech out to sea water in amounts dangerous to anything, or at least significant relative to natural trace content? (Pretty sure it doesn't)
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      Probably not asbestos, but lead and other heavy-metal leaching would probably depend on local water conditions.
      - jojobas 4y ago
        Where would these be used in an average ship, or any ship in particular? Lead is naturally found in sea water within 2-30 ppb. To raise global lead concentration by 1 ppb you need to dump a few billion tons of lead. It's often said that solution to pollution is dilution.
        dan-robertson 4y ago

fnord77 4y ago

> ‘When you’re torch-cutting a vessel, the anti-fouling paints, which contain large amounts of heavy metals, will also heat up and release toxic fumes,’ Jenssen adds. Anti-fouling paints contain copper.

maxerickson 4y ago
Copper is a heavy metal and makes lots of toxic compounds.

mjevans 4y ago

After thinking about this for a while the answer I've come up with is to remove the bottom from the market. Robots. Robots are the only answer because when there's a profit to be made some crook will figure out a place it's legal to make it. So I guess robots or ending capitalism. Though I've heard the latter devolved into abuse of power rather than money in the major example that comes to my mind.