Asbestos Removal Stifles U.S. Shipbreakers

Old naval ships provide a rich repository of thick steel, copper tubing, and brass plate--mixed with poisonous plastics and asbestos. Some shipbreakers in the U.S. continue to close their businesses because of the environmental requirements and high labor costs for asbestos removal. Others shipbreakers are towing ships to Third-World countries where environmental protections are lax. While others still are working with scientists to find innovative environmental-clean-up methods for asbestos removal. Here are their stories. You’ll notice while reading, how asbestos continues to plague business and potentially harm victims. Learn your rights, by contacting Seeger Weiss today.

Near Los Angeles, California, National Metals were thriving shipbreakers on Terminal Island until quitting the business. "We used to push 4,000,000 tons of material a month through National Metals," says Yoel Dagmy, a former employee. Dagmy blames the "runaway costs" of asbestos removal, as well as the drop in steel demand, for the loss of one of the country's largest shipbreakers.

Given the environmental requirements, "it's very tough to make money in the U.S., unless you can get the ships for $30 a ton or less," says Andrew Levy, president of Northern Maritime Co., a New York firm. Northern Maritime bought 15 surplus U.S. Navy ships. Hurdles for shipbreakers include the many cables and gaskets, as well as asbestos removal. "It all takes a lot of labor," Levy says.

Most civilian shipbreakers moved overseas because of cheap labor and relatively lax environmental standards. Today, India is one of the largest shipbreakers with an estimated one million tons a year. A single shipbreaker--Alang, in western Gujarat--performs about 30 percent of the world's ship scrapping.

All Third-World shipbreakers have cheap local labor available and can easily dispose of polychlorine biphenyls (PCBs), asbestos removal, and other contaminants that are found on the old craft. U.S. regulations prohibit exporting ships with PCBs, but not those needing asbestos removal. According to environmental group Greenpeace, a United States vessel was towed to Turkey with hundreds of tons of asbestos on it

Because shipbreakers never know what they're going to find on a ship that may be several decades old, they want to do the work where the legal consequences of asbestos removal are light, the Shipbuilders Council says. "Shipbreakers are scrambling to get into the least environmentally conscious Third-World countries, where they'll take anything and not enforce asbestos removal," a representative says.

Dismantling Naval Ships in California

San Francisco-area politicians, business and labor groups converter three naval facilities into the Bay Area Ship Recycling Complex. The complex dismantles vessels as the military shrinks its inventory. The California project, aims to preserve jobs, says Eve Bach, a planner for the Arms Control Research Center, the San Francisco-based nonprofit group that helped with the plan.

Rather than seek exemptions from environmental regulations, the California planners are working with researchers at the nearby Lawrence Livermore Laboratories to find innovative environmental-cleanup methods for asbestos removal.

The Bay Area planners are exploring other ways to make money as shipbreakers also. A chief idea is to sell salvaged items, rather than convert them into scrap. Products can range from steel plates and plumbing fixtures to toasters.

Astoria Metals, a San Francisco, California scrap company with experience as a shipbreaker, licensed a dry dock at the Navy's defunct Hunter's Point facility. It takes apart Navy ships and resells some of the pans to offshore power plants.