According to the co-hosts and experts from Pacific Environment, Southeast Alaska Conservation Council and Alaska Community Action on Toxics in an hour-long webinar on scrubber pollution, a growing body of scientific work and studies showed that Exhaust Gas Cleaning Systems, otherwise known as scrubbers, are detrimental to the marine environment, wildlife and people’s health.
On the surface, having scrubbers on ships might sound like a good thing, a way to take pollution from burning fossil fuels out of the air, but scrubbers transfer enormous amounts of extremely toxic pollution from the air and, instead, dump it into our oceans.
James Gamble, Senior Director, Arctic Program, Pacific Environment, said: “The proliferation of scrubbers is devastating our oceans and the health of our wildlife.
“Pacific Environment just released a new paper that shows the growing evidence of research that scrubbers are bad for the environment, for wildlife and for our ocean health. The Biden and Harris administration has an opportunity to clean up shipping and ban the use of scrubbers now.”
Co-host Aaron Brakel, Clean Water Campaigns Manager, Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, said: “Exhaust gas scrubber pollution is unnecessary and irresponsible.
“This waste should never be generated – readily available cleaner fuel can be used instead. Burning dirty heavy bunker fuel and dumping unnecessarily generated scrubber waste into Alaska and nearby waters has got to stop.”
Vivian Mork, a Tlingit teacher of traditional foods and traditional harvesting said: “Haa atx̱aayi haa ḵusteeyíx̱ sitee, our food is our Tlingit way of life. These waters have to be protected to protect the people and the animals that live here. In our culture we donʼt separate ourselves from these things so that what happens to these waters happens to us. Haa daséigux̱ héen, water is life.”
Recent scientific studies show that scrubber discharge is extremely toxic to marine life at very low concentrations, and scrubber discharge may have a serious impact on the populations of key species of marine food webs.
In Alaska, a major cruise destination, scrubber discharges heavily impact the waters of Southeast Alaska’s famed Inside Passage as well as communities and all around Alaska’s 6,640 miles of coastline, where cruise traffic is expanding farther west and north as the Arctic Ocean’s ice packs melt and recede.
Photo credit: iStock/ Martina Birnbaum
