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We’ve done this shipping pollution already haven’t we?

A bracing stroll along the beach breathing in lungfuls of fresh sea air is widely considered to be beneficial to health.
But a new study suggests that refreshing sea breezes may actually contain a toxic cocktail of pollution caused by ferries, container ships and other sea traffic.
A study of the air along coastal areas for the specialist science journal Oceanologia discovered high levels of ‘hazardous nanoparticles’ which can penetrate the lungs and cause heart disease and other ailments.

I recall this from, what, half a decade back? And thus the law has been changed? When near populated land ships must use a higher class of fuel, not the dredgings from the bottom of the refinery?

This all being implemented now and into the near future, meaning that they’re reporting on something that is largely already dealt with?

8 thoughts on “We’ve done this shipping pollution already haven’t we?”

  1. So Much For Subtlety

    When near populated land ships must use a higher class of fuel, not the dredgings from the bottom of the refinery?

    Good luck enforcing that. Look, who cares? There is a lot of ocean out there. Dumping a little ship exhaust into a large atmosphere is unlikely to be a problem.

    Especially as it has been known for some time that ships’ exhaust creates low level clouds which have a cooling effect on the planet:

    https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12658-shipping-smoke-plumes-cool-the-atmosphere/

    The Earth’s temperature rose after the ban on airplanes after 9-11 as well.

    As I have said before, the “warmth” of the 1990s might just be a side effect of the collapse of the USSR, hence a large reduction in coal pollution and hence an end to the artificial cooling it caused.

  2. Low sulpur fuel introduced to reduce SO2 emissions won’t necessarily make any difference to the release of particulate carbon nano or otherwise

  3. Thank God these people don’t get out more.

    A stroll down the average high street would leave them gibbering wrecks…

  4. SMfS: ” The Earth’s temperature rose after the ban on airplanes after 9-11 as well.”

    Really? I heard the opposite: because of the sudden drop in water vapour in the atmosphere, water vapour being a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the planet cooled.

  5. ‘A study of the air along coastal areas for the specialist science journal Oceanologia discovered high levels of ‘hazardous nanoparticles’ which can penetrate the lungs and cause heart disease and other ailments.’

    Curious. Since nanoparticles are not hazardous elsewhere, I wonder what it is about coastal areas that make them hazardous. Or Oceanologia is trash. Ahh, that’s it. The junk science journal Oceanologia.

  6. “the dredgings from the bottom of the refinery”: I can’t remember what we called the heavy ends in the refinery where I worked: “bunker fuel” perhaps? Tim N will know.

    In my petrochemical experience we called the heavy ends “crud”. When I was first told this as a newstart, I asked “what is its proper name?” “‘Crud’ is its proper name” I was told.

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