Public Health / Air Pollution
Cruise ships harm our health by emitting toxic air pollution, by acting as a vector for viral disease spread, and by destabilizing the climate.
Most cruise ships are powered by heavy fuel oil, one of the dirtiest, most toxic fuels on earth. Burning heavy fuel oil generates exhaust full of toxic gases (sulfur and nitrogen); metals like lead, nickel, and zinc; and a slew of incombustible particles.
These gases and particles drift into Seattle and its surrounding communities; in fact, they affect the air in coastal communities all the way from Seattle to Alaska. Breathing in these pollutants causes or contributes to a wide range of serious health problems, including asthma, heart and lung disease, cancer, and premature death.
Cruise Ship Emissions & Public Health, #NoT46 Expansion
Cruise ship emissions are a danger to public health, causing heart disease, lung disease and early death in coastline communities and ports of call. With the majority of Seattle cruise passengers taking airline flights it means even more health impacts for communities surrounding SeaTac. Elected Port of Seattle Commissioners can choose to terminate current plans to expand the cruise industry. Investing $100 million tax-payer dollars to build a cruise ship terminal at T46 ignores what is best for our neighborhoods and ignores the climate crisis."Expansion should not come at the expense of the health of our citizens."Testimony by Annemarie Dooley, MD with Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility
Posted by Seattle Cruise Control on Saturday, March 14, 2020
Many cruise ships are now being built to run on LNG – liquefied natural gas – and cruise lines claim that this makes their cruises “green”. This is false: due to leakage and its greater warming effect, LNG is actually worse for the climate than conventional marine fuel. [1].
Some suggest that installing “scrubbers” removes the harmful toxins from the air, but most vessels use an “open loop” system that merely transfers the toxins into our waterways, devastating the entire marine food chain and contaminating the seafood we eat. [2]
Up to 90% of Seattle’s cruise passengers fly here to take their cruises, so more cruises means more airplane flights. Airplane exhaust contains many harmful substances, including sulfur oxides, oxides of nitrogen, hazardous air pollutants, carbon monoxide, and coarse, fine, and ultrafine particulate matter. These pollutants cause a slew of serious health problems, including asthma, heart disease, stroke, and dementia. Ultrafine particles are the biggest environmental risk factor for early death. Noise from airplanes is not just annoying; it causes increased blood pressure, hypertension, heart disease, heart attack, and stroke. [3]
Cruise ships were a major factor in the initial spread of the COVID-19 virus and continue to present a higher disease risk, both to passengers and the communities they visit, due to the concentration of people in confined spaces for long periods. Even before the COVID pandemic, Norovirus outbreaks were relatively common on ships.
And cruise ships contribute to climate change, which brings its own health risks. In Washington State, climate change has already led to increases in the following serious health issues, all of which are projected to get worse in the years ahead [4]:
- Lyme disease and West Nile virus: rising temperatures have led to changing tick habitat and earlier onset of West Nile virus-carrying mosquitoes
- Heat-related hospital admissions and heat-related death
- Respiratory illnesses from more frequent wildfires and air pollution
Hotter temperatures lead to increases in ground-level ozone (smog), small particulate matter, and airborne allergens, all of which are definitively linked to heart attack, stroke, some cancers, and respiratory disease.
Sources:
[1] The climate implications of using LNG as a marine fuel, International Council on Clean Transportation, January 28, 2020.
[2] Shipping rule cleans the air but dirties the water, Science, May 13, 2021, and Severe Toxic Effects on Pelagic Copepods from Maritime Exhaust Gas Scrubber Effluents, in Environmental Science & Technology, April 20, 2021.
[3] Community Health and Airport Operations-Related Noise and Air Pollution, Washington State Transportation Commission, February 15, 2024.
[4] Fourth National Climate Assessment, U.S. Global Change Research Program, Chapter 24: Northwest, 2018.