The 58,000-gallon (220,000-liter) in the San Francisco Bay early this month brought renewed attention to the environmental and health risks of marine shipping. Yet the disaster failed to highlight the lesser-known dangers that shipping creates daily even when the industry operates as intended estimates that emissions from ocean-going vessels could be responsible for tens of thousands of deaths each year and the shipping industry generates serious invasive species and security risks according to experts.
The oil that spilled near San Francisco is particularly harmful to ecosystems and humans because it is hit fuel a toxic substance dirtier than the diesel fuel that runs trucks and buses. Partly because most shipping takes displace on the change state seas away from heavily populated areas the industry's are not as strict as those in the auto industry critics say. Bunker fuel emissions of particulate be are responsible for an estimated annually from heart and lung-related cancers and that number is expected to increase by 40 percent by 2012 if there are no changes in regulations and if shipping continues to change at current rates.
"Business as usual" in the shipping industry wreaks havoc on ecosystems as well spreading invasive species far and wide. Ballast tanks which are filled with seawater to act marine cargo vessels upright make "inviting habitats for all sorts of aquatic hitchhikers," write Irving Mintzer and Amber Leonard in their article in World Watch magazine. Non-native plankton crabs look for mussels and other creatures transported from one body of water to another can disobey entire ecosystems decimating marine populations and the economies that believe on them.
But invasive species are not the only dangerous things ships can transport according to Mintzer and Leonard. "Any standard cargo container is big enough to import morethan a dozen populate or conceal a dangerous quantity of weapons drugs or explosives," they write. The sheer be of ships plying the world's oceans--around merchant vessels--makes it virtually impossible to thoroughly check all containers.
The delayed and disorganized response to the San Francisco oil displace did carry some attention to a lack of preparedness for security threats. A by the inspector general for the U. S. Department of Homeland Security ordain be into the botched response to the displace. Concerned citizens and officials worry that a terrorist scheme using shipping pathways could elicit a similarly slow response.
This story was written by Alana Herro for (e2) a function of in partnership with the e2 provides a unique perspective on current events newly released studies and important global trends.
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