Rajkot: Lockdown may have hit Alang ship breaking yard economically, but it did some good too. It made the air cleaner by cutting down on the pollutions levels significantly. A study conducted by Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Institute (CSMCRI) and Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR) Ghaziabad on the pollution levels in the world’s biggest ship dismantling facility shows that it is within threshold limits and suggests that overall Air Quality Index (AQI) improved significantly during lockdown.
The study found four-fold reduction of PM2.5 and SPM values during lockdown.
They took samples of ambient air, coastal water, coastal sediments, fish and bioaccumulation of heavy metals in and around Alang for five days during complete lockdown (May 12-16) for the study, which it conducted in collaboration with
According to GMB data in the last 15 years a total of 3906 ships with 33.896 MMT of light displacement tonnage (LDT) were recycled at Alang.
While comparing it with 2018 and 2019 data researchers found the results promising as PM10 values during lockdown were reduced by 3.75 to 4.5 times as compared with the previous two years. It also found gaseous pollutants like NO2 and O3 within safe limits.
The report stated drastic reduction in the majority of the nutrient parameters in the coastal water. “This proves that the coastal environment has its efficient self-cleaning potential if there is considerable reduction in anthropogenic as well as industrial activity,” said the report.
The study was done by Amit Chanchpara, Vasavdutta Sonpal, Gauravkumar Mehta, Tarini Prashad Sahoo, Ravikumar Thorat, Sanak Ray and Soumya Haldar who utilized the opportunity to collect baseline data in Alang ship recycling yard to find the environment level when there was no existence of this industry.
This data can be treated as baseline data for new normal conditions and help to generate environmental standards for ship breaking yards across the world.
When the ship arrives at Alang for dismantling they contain complex materials including hazardous substances which needs to be disposed of in environmentally safe manar following international parameters. Avantika Singh vice chairman and CEO of GMB said “A significant reduction in pollution levels was recorded. This data confirmed that the downstream waste management facility developed by GMB considerably reduced the impact of ship recycling activities at Alang.”
Atul Sharma senior environment engineer, GMB said, “CSMCRI did the complete scanning of the environment here and found that 40 years of pollution was abolished in three months of lockdown. That means that the temporary pollutants are within the threshold value of the natural ecosystem so when we zero down all the activity the pollution level came down.”