My first blog talked about Clemenceau, the toxic french battleship battling to be scrapped in Indian Soil.
Thanks to the Suprement Court Monitoring Committee headed by Mr.Thayagarajan (which was appointed by the honourable Supreme Court of India to get the facts right on the toxins in the ship and its impact on Indian environment/workers before the Supreme Court takes a decision on the same), the committee has said that the ship is not welcome to enter Indian waters (Forget entering Alang and being scrapped there).
The monitoring committee has said that there has been NO TRANSPARENCY on the part of the french authorities on the amount of toxic material on board the ship and hence it is not desirable to allow the ship into the Indian waters.
Sending toxic material into India is a clear violation of the Basel convention to which both India and France are signatories.
It has also been found that the ship now contains loads of mercury in it. Mercury is a dangerous toxic metal which easily enters our bodies (and can also easily contaminate soil and other animal life) and adversely affects the CNS Central Nervous System and also the Immune system.
I sincerely wish that no more ships arrive to Indian shores for being scrapped and their toxins and other waste being dumped here.
As I said earlier, we dont need ship breaking yards, instead we need ship building yards. We need innovative industries to be built in India, not doing cheap life threatening low grade, risky labor to serve the western luxuries and become background dumping ground for their wastes..
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Gurudev,
The message should be loud and clear, “Keep and treat your own waste, especially toxic materials”. No monetary compensation is worth the risk. As soon as Mercury is mentioned the first thing that comes to mind is the Minamata tragedy in Japan.
The cats, in 1952 showed the first signs, the famous documentories show cats whirling in violent circles, completely disoriented and slobberring and throwing themselves in the sea.
The cause was the dumping of methyl mercury by Chisso Corporation, a chemical company into the Minamata Bay, Japan. This highly toxic chemical in the shellfish and fish when eaten by local populace resulted in mercury poisoning. For thirty years (since 1930) the deaths of cats, dogs and people continued. The company denied all alegations. A little six year old girl who had been very bright suddenly showed signs of brain damage resulting with the same symtoms as the cats -1956. The victims rallied together and took Chisso to court. They finally triumphed in 1973.
By 2004, the company had paid out $86 million dollars in compensation.
In 1974, the very next year after the Chisso pay-out, I enrolled in a course in “Pollution Treatment”. As a young man, all excited about solving and preventing, all the pollution in the world. As we students parted in our own ways seeking exciting careers, one of my friends wrote in my college annual, ” In order to find a job in pollution, we’ve to pollute the earth first” . :) Sadly speaking, this is exactly what has happened, but are we ready to learn our lessons?
Yes Prakash, the other downside of pollution is that only when human tragedies get involved do the people wake up usually. Most of the time till then the whole pollution goes unnoticed. Most of the pollution on this planet would be avoided if humans find an alternate to fossil fuel, stop converting forest land and ban industrial outlets into natural water sources. But it is easier said than done.