After hearing Gary's excellent presentation at the Eco Roundtable meeting, I thought it would be useful to give a quick lesson on the health problems of ship pollution.

When I lived in Los Angeles, I had the honor, as a Surfrider Foundation and Sierra Club leader, of suing the cruise ship industry three times. One of their answers in court was that the shipping industry is much worse than the cruise industry. That was and is true. The reason is simply that there are more cargo ships than cruise ships. We pay for cheap goods from China and the mainland with cheap ships that pollute.

Bunker fuel is like tar. It burns with a lot of soot. The large soot particles land on your cars and eat it's finish. The health problem is with the small soot--fine particulates. These tiny particles are 0.5 microns in diameter and are small enough to get into your smallest tubes in your lungs--bronchioles. In Los Angeles, the EPA estimates that certain neighborhoods near the ports and airports had a thousand deaths per year from particulate pollution. We called this area, the "diesel death zone." Now politicians are calling it that also.

Diesel fuel from trucks and "cleaner" ships also spew out particulates. Burning diesel over bunker is an improvement, but not a solution.

So called "Vog" is also particulate pollution.

Theses particulates are a known cause of asthma, emphysema, heart disease and cancer.

The smokestack's "smell" is from Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC). These smells are also quite toxic and carcinogenic.

Ships need to burn diesel and filter their emissions. The collected soot should go to the land fill.

Gordon LaBedz, MD
Surfrider Foundation, Kaua'i