Environmentalists Condemn US Support for Trade in Toxics Ships

["greenbase" <greenbas@gb.greenpeace.org>]

ENVIRONMENTALISTS CONDEMN U.S. SUPPORT FOR TRADE IN TOXIC SHIPS 

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON/SAO PAULO, BRAZIL, April 22, 1998 - 
The Basel Action Network (BAN) and Greenpeace International
denounced a US governmental report this week that supports the
continued export of United States Navy and other US vessels to
extremely hazardous recycling operations in developing
countries. The Interagency Panel on Ship Scrapping gave its
support to the scheme even while acknowledging that the ships
were likely to contain very hazardous substances such as
asbestos and PCBs, and that developing countries lack the
environmental or occupational safety standards necessary to
prevent harm.

BAN and Greenpeace vowed to wage an international campaign to
close the loopholes in international and domestic laws which
allow hazardous exports for shipbreaking to continue. 

"We demand that the US government revoke its support for
contaminated ships-for-scrap export, and stop sending their
poisonous wastes to facilities with abysmal worker safety and
environmental conditions," said Marcelo Furtado of Greenpeace
International. Furtado said the groups will raise the issue at
the next appropriate meeting of the Basel Convention on the
Control of the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and
Their Disposal. 

Already, BAN and Greenpeace, in coalition with developing and
progressive European countries, have won a full global ban on
the export of hazardous wastes from the industrialized nations
to developing countries within the Basel treaty. So far though,
most countries have not yet applied the Basel Convention to
ship-for-scrap schemes, even though contaminated scrap metal
bound for recycling is already subject to the Basel Ban. 

The US is not yet a party to the Basel Convention and refuses to
ratify the Basel Ban. Indeed, the US has worked very hard to
prevent the passage of the international waste dumping ban but
has been soundly defeated at the Basel Convention on three
occasions.

"It is clear that the United States views the developing world
as a promising repository for its hazardous waste problems,
including a whole generation of asbestos and PCB laden ships.
The panel's decision is a sad tribute to gutless bureaucracy and
morally bankrupt policy," said Jim Puckett of the BAN in
Seattle.

Last January, Greenpeace and BAN - India organized a peaceful
demonstration with activists from all the Indian central trade
unions, people's movements and citizens' groups at the U.S.
Embassy in New Delhi to protest the U.S. exports of toxic-laden
ships for scrap to South Asia. The primary destination of ships
for scrap in India, is the port of Alang in the state of
Gujarat. There, 35,000 poor laborers working in primitive
conditions cut open the ships with blowtorches and chisels.
Deaths or crippling accidents occur almost daily and exposure to
toxic compounds goes completely unregulated. 

The Interagency Panel on Ship Scrapping report is on the
Department of Defense website at: http://www.denix.osd.mil.