Study: NW shipping industry is major air polluter
Study meant to help ports, private industry cut future emissions
To prepare the Puget Sound region for the immense amount of trade thought to be coming this way from Asia, the local ports and their private industry partners are planning to reduce the amount of toxins the ships, trucks and other transport devices pump into the air.
To do that effectively, they had to know just how much of that stuff the maritime industry was producing. On Tuesday, they got what they needed: the fullest account of a year's worth of maritime air emissions ever produced here.
The results weren't pretty, but they are a start.
The Puget Sound Air Emissions Inventory measured air pollution created in 2005 by oceangoing vessels, cargo-handling equipment, trucks, rail and harbor craft such as ferries. The area studied extends from the Strait of Juan de Fuca east to the Cascades, north to the Canadian border and just south of Olympia.
In 2005, maritime activities produced more than 1,444 gross tons of diesel particulate matter -- more than half of the studied area's total -- and an additional 3,109 gross tons of fine particulate matter such as dust, dirt, soot and smoke. The study also measured nitrogen and sulfur-containing compounds, volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide.
"Everybody understands that trade is great, but if I can't breathe, what's the point?" asked Bruce Anderson, principal of the Starcrest Consulting Group, which conducted the inventory with port staff and comment from the public sector and representatives of the cruise, cargo and rail industries.
Continue reading this article from the Seattle P-I:
Maritime industry looks at its pollution -- and it isn't pretty
