Along the Houston Ship Channel, a 52-mile waterway that spills into the Gulf of Mexico, giant vessels cruise beneath the blazing summer sun. Rusty tankers fill their holds with Texas specialties: refined oil products, petrochemicals, and plastic resins. Container ships arrive carrying corrugated boxes of imported T-shirts, electronics, and metals.
Inside each freighter, however, one cargo is the same: the heavy fuel oil that drives their engines and winds up in the air as exhaust.
Cargo ships are significant sources of air pollution globally, and their fuel oil is largely responsible. Pitch black and thick as molasses, “bunker” fuel is made from the dregs of the refining process. It’s also loaded with sulfur — the chemical that, when burned, produces noxious gases and fine particles that can harm human health and the environment, especially along highly trafficked areas.
“There are lots of communities that live fenceline to the ship channel,” said Grace Tee Lewis, who is studying the public health effects of Houston’s ship pollution at the Environmental Defense Fund. Near Houston, boats are required to switch to low-sulfur fuels in an effort to limit air pollution, “but we also know emissions from ships can travel hundreds of miles inland.”
Read more at Yale Environment 360
Photo: U.S. Navy photo by Larry Larsson