Ship toxins kill 60,000 a year
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Environmental report says world’s fleet must switch to cleaner fuels and curb smokestack pollutants
International shipping companies must curb smokestack emissions that kill up to 60,000 people a year, including 9,000 in North America, warns a study released yesterday.
Unless the world’s ocean fleet switches to cleaner fuels, the annual global toll of premature deaths will hit 84,000 within five years, says the study in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Shippers, through the International Maritime Organization, are considering tougher rules.
The effort would be expensive, but less costly than the total for health care and lost productivity and income resulting from the pollution, says David Marshall, of the Clean Air Task Force, one of the groups that commissioned the study…
