Almost all seamen above a certain ago
who are reading this carry a cancerous time bomb in their lungs- the
ingredients of a disease that, if it explodes, will kill them quickly, in a
year or two. Mesothelioma is an incurable cancer. Many of you-and I- may have
also brought its chief ingredient home, clinging to our clothing and our suitcases.
We may have unwittingly exposed our families to painful death. The ingredient-asbestos- has been present in
large quantities on almost all the ships we have worked on. Not that a large
amount is required to kill you; a few fibres and minute particles will do that
just as efficiently.
The young are not immune to it either,
because asbestos- banned in fifty odd countries- is freely used in many others
even today, including in India and China, the world's biggest shipbuilder. Despite
amendments to SOLAS- that came into effect last year- banning its use in
shipbuilding. Despite WHO's guidelines. Despite recommendations from medical
experts across the world. Despite nobody disputing that exposure to asbestos
can cause Mesothelioma. Despite the ILO saying that 100,000 die each year due
to asbestos related diseases, 125 million people are exposed to it at the
workplace today.
Asbestos- once considered miracle
material because it was hard, could be used anywhere and did not burn- was found
on most ships built up to the 60's. Used extensively in paints, insulation
sheets, boilers and firewalls, a ship's closed atmosphere- accommodation or engine
room- meant that asbestos particles released into the internal atmosphere
remained in circulation, in the air and on the surfaces around. "One US
study of merchant marine seamen found that 17 percent of the men studied
displayed bodily abnormalities consistent with asbestos exposure and related
diseases," says a US report. That is, one in six seamen displayed symptoms
of asbestos related mayhem.
Look at the other numbers that have
come out of the US, where, according to
the Florida based Mesothelioma centre, " almost
one third of merchant marine seaman who passed away during World War II as a
result of their occupation were not killed overseas by enemy fire or any other
act of war. More than 100,000 thousand dedicated merchant mariners died many
years later from illnesses like mesothelioma and lung cancer caused by exposure
to asbestos."
Anybody care to put a number to how many have seamen have died or
suffered since then?
The IMO's 2009 Hong Kong Convention for the Safe and
Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships (that will come into force in 2015, if
my memory is not shot completely) states, “An appendix to the Convention will
provide a list of hazardous materials the installation or use of which is
prohibited or restricted in shipyards, ship repair yards, and ships of Parties
to the Convention. Ships will be required to have an initial survey to verify
the inventory of hazardous materials, additional surveys during the life of the
ship, and a final survey prior to recycling.”
But this inventory, dubbed the Green Passport, and the
'Asbestos Free' certificate issued in connection, is often undermined by
commercial interests. Listen to what Nick Bennett had to say in Lloyd's list in
2010- “Having spent the last eight years undertaking hazardous materials
assessments on a range of vessels throughout Australasia, I can attest that I do not believe I have ever found a
vessel of any type or age, including at least one new building, which does not
contain some amount of asbestos-contaminated material in its plant or structure.”
Mr Bennett adds that companies offer asbestos-free
certificates “who simply do not have the expertise or necessary independence to
make such attestations for which the end user should be reliant". It is
precisely because the ban on asbestos is being regularly subverted that we have
seen Australia and the EU take other measures to try to ban 'asbestosised'
ships from entering their ports. I wish the Indian authorities would do the
same especially at Alang, whose workers- many living in shanties inside dirty
and dusty scrap yards, are horrendously exposed to asbestos and therefore Mesothelioma.
Just like seamen.
In 2006, the Indian Supreme Court
found that 16 percent of ships chopped up at Alang had asbestos traces. An
Alang based safety officer and union official said at the time, "I can't
say we haven't had (tuberculosis) or deaths, just not an epidemic." And,
"Whether workers survive or die in their village, no one knows." The ongoing fracas with the ex Exxon Valdez
coming to the Alang graveyard is about asbestos too, in addition to mercury,
arsenic and all the other goodies they bring us.
Meanwhile, are
you a seaman? Do you suffer from abdominal pain, fatigue, hoarseness, and
weight loss? Do you think you have handled asbestos material on ships or
inhaled any miniscule fibrous particles? Any loved ones displaying similar
symptoms, or spitting up blood, or are jaundiced or have blood clots? Have
fibres attached themselves to tissues around vital organs, causing
inflammation? These are typical symptoms of mesothelioma; the onset of which almost
invariably means death in less than two years.
It may be too late for those of us already exposed to asbestos:
only time will tell. I know I have handled asbestos on many ships when I was
younger, in the accommodation and engine room both. I know I have inhaled it for
much of my working life; I just don't know for how long or how much.
That is because seamen do not know, usually, whether the ships
they work on are asbestos free or not. They do not know for sure if the paints
they use are clean, or that a ship is not picking up asbestos in one form or
another during its voyage- in cargo, stores or whatever. They can only hope
that some of the newer ships they work on were asbestos free at least when they
were built. Hope, not trust.
It is shocking that, decades after the dangers of asbestos first
became known, seamen continue to be knowingly exposed to a substance that
causes incurable cancer, by an industry that has abrogated its primary responsibility
to provide safe working conditions for them.
Not so shocking, actually, if you see what else goes on out there.
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