More SOx gases are eliminated by the largest shipping company than by all European cars

Ecology and emissions have been the main topic of the car industry for several years now, especially after the outbreak of the dieselgate affair. The introduction of new standards for measuring emissions, tightening up legislation and anything else that would help reduce environmental impacts, especially when it comes to CO2 emissions. On the other hand, sulphur oxides remains unnoticed.

Sulfuric oxide is responsible for many respiratory diseases, as well as death, and it affects the environment as one of the causes of acid rain. The environmental and human health impacts are therefore all the more severe than carbon dioxide emissions, for example.

In the car world, the main culprits of SOx are diesel motors, but they are not near as severe as largest passenger ships in the world. For example, a recent study has shown that all passenger cruisers of the world's largest shipping company, Carnival corporation, produce as many as 10 times as many harmful discharges as all registered cars in Europe. The second largest shipping company, Royal Carribean Cruises, got away with it a little better, but even here, the value is four times higher.

If you check through European cities, or of Europe's biggest ports, you can see that the 105 cruise ships that land in Barcelona in one year emmit 33.000 kilograms of SOx, which is almost five times greater than that of the all 560.000 cars. For example, on Palma de Malorca, this proportion is much worse. At the same time, ships eliminate another 15% of the number of emissions from all European passenger cars.

This study was prepared in the Transport of&Enviroment, and her representative, Faig Abbasov, commented on the results by the following words: “Luxury cruise ships are floating cities powered by some of the dirtiest fuel possible. Cities are rightly banning dirty diesel cars but they’re giving a free pass to cruise companies that spew out toxic fumes that do immeasurable harm both to those on board and on nearby shores. This is unacceptable.“

Abbasov adds that we already have a number of technologies that could reduce emissions. For example, it proposes the introduction of electric motors on ships for moving in ports, thus helping to reduce emitions of fumes within the cities.

June 7, 2019 Living photo: Profimedia

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