Chemists at University of California San Diego, US, have found that dirty smoke from ships degrades air quality in coastal cities.
According to the scientists, the impact of dirty smoke from ships burning high-sulfur fuel can be substantial, on some days accounting for nearly one-half of the fine, sulfur-rich particulate matter in the air known to be hazardous to human health.
International rules requiring clean-burning ship fuels are set to take effect in 2015, intended to minimize the potential hazards dirty ship smoke may pose to human health and the environment.
Some researchers have estimated that these hazards may be responsible for as many as 60,000 deaths worldwide and a cost to the US economy of 500 million dollars a year, no one knows the actual impact of ship smoke.
The reason is that air quality experts have been unable to quantify the specific contribution of ship smoke to the air pollution of coastal cities, until now.
"This is the first study that shows the contribution of ships to fine particulates in the atmosphere," said Mark Thiemens, Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCSD, who headed the research team.
"Ships are really unregulated when it comes to air pollution standards. What we wanted to find out was the contribution of ships to the air pollution in San Diego. And what we found was a surprise, because no one expected that the contribution from ships of solid sulfur-rich particles called primary sulfate would be so high," he added.