Impact of ship-Breaking activities on the coastal environment of Bangladesh and a management system for its sustainability

Accumulation and distribution of heavy metals in soil and food crops around the ship breaking area in southern Bangladesh and associated health risk assessment

“…Ship scrapping activities have been held responsible for polluting the adjacent environment [3,4]. A scrapping vessel generates a large amount of waste and hazardous substances [3,5], along with lots of assets.…”

“…Currently, more than 100 registered ship recycling yards and about 20 industries linked to this ship breaking are working in Sitakunda area along with approximately 40,000 industrial workers [6]. However, the process is controversial and poses human health risks, safety as well as the environmental problems [5]. The seawater and surrounding soil in the coastal area of Sitakunda, Chittagong, Bangladesh, are heavily polluted due to ship scraping activities [4,7].…”

European policies on ship recycling: A stakeholder survey

“…The global image of ship recycling has the terrible conditions of the environment and occupational health and safety as indicators [4,35,36,67,68]. The respondents indicate that the global SSRI is experiencing gradual positive changes from its transfer to the less developed countries and later growth.…”

“…[35][36][37][38][39][40][41]. The necessity of a sustainable SSRI is recognised, and has received much attention by the EU and in international policy by means of the promotion, in 2009, of the Hong Kong Convention (HKC) under the auspices of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), 4 its European equivalent Regulation (EU) No 1257/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 November 2013, 5 also known as the European Ship Recycling Regulation (SRR), 6 which entered into force on 30 December 2013, and the Basel Convention on the Control of Trans-boundary Movement of Hazardous Waste and their Disposal (BC), which regulate how ships are sold, managed, traded, and scrapped [4,12,13,27,42]. The HKC and the BC have been points of reference for the EU in the development of a regulatory body in the matter of ship recycling, more specifically with respect to the recycling of ships registered in some of the countries that form the EU.…”

“…In recent years, proposed ship recycling (dismantling, breaking, demolition or scrapping) rules have come to command greater attention, by reason of the growing protest against defunct seagoing ships being dismantled under environmentally damaging and humanly degrading conditions [1][2][3][4][5] 1 . Most of these activities are carried out at shipbreaking and ship recycling facilities (SSRF) in developing countries.…”