Press Association
Tuesday October 10, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Wildlife campaigners warned today that a chemical used in paint on boats and ships is spreading pollution from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
The WWF said member countries of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), including the UK, are allowing the toxin tributyltin (TBT) to contaminate wildlife and enter the food chain.
The environmental group is calling on member countries to ratify their own five-year-old legislation to bring an end to the pollution.
TBT was widely used in anti-fouling paints to prevent marine organisms sticking to the hulls of boats and ships.
The WWF is to submit a paper tomorrow to a meeting of the IMO on the problem of TBT pollution.
Its research shows the impact on mussels, oysters, clams, abalone and gastropods as well as high contamination of a range of other marine animals such as skipjack tuna and harbour porpoises.
Dr Simon Walmsley, head of WWF-UK's marine programme, said: "This is a scandal the world should be ashamed of.
"Forty years after TBT's negative impacts were first identified and five years after the legislation to ban it was agreed, TBT is still used indiscriminately, polluting global marine life and our food chain."
Only 17 out of 166 member countries of the IMO have ratified the legislation.
However, the majority of the shipping industry supports a ban, with only unscrupulous operators still using it.
The leading paint companies have not produced TBT since 2003 and market commercially viable alternatives instead.
Dr Walmsley added: "Generally the shipping and paint industries support the legislation being ratified. Delegates at the IMO whose countries have not signed up - including the UK - should be ashamed.
"This is the most toxic chemical ever deliberately released into the marine environment and there is no excuse for doing it."
The negative impacts of TBT were first suspected in the late 1960s.
It has been shown to change the sex of dog whelks, has caused oyster crops failures in France and has closed shellfish farms.
The WWF said it contaminates wildlife in the open ocean as well as in coastal waters.
After 2008, EU legislation will ban the use of TBT on EU-flagged vessels and any ship painted with it will be refused entry to EU ports.
WWF said the size of the EU market meant this would be enough to hamper any shipping company's trade.
This has been happening for decades. Why only recently has anything been said about it? it probably has to do with the sheisty folk who own our press. Why is it they subdue all the hard facts and obscure evidence, ignore the obvious, release important information after it's too late to do anything about it, and play it off like they're in the dark? Do they think we are stupid? I think I'll give the rhetorical questions a rest for now.
