Don't be fooled by deadly tales

The campaign to stop the first of the US "ghost ships" being dismantled in Hartlepool is one of the more outrageous pieces of spin recently to be inflicted on the British public. It risks resulting in much more damage to people and the environment worldwide than it claims to try to prevent.

Anyone following the hype of the last weeks would conclude that the two 60-year-old vessels about to dock in the North-East - and the two following them on the high seas - pose a unique and deadly danger.

Friends of the Earth calls them "toxic timebombs", says that bringing them to Teesside is "extremely hazardous", and even suggests that their contents could make some places "uninhabitable". Greenpeace says they are carrying "cocktails of hazardous substances."

No wonder 90 per cent of the people of Hartlepool told a local poll that they opposed the ships coming and that the town council unanimously said the same. But they have been monstrously misled.

For the ships are not awash with deadly chemicals threatening to spill out and devastate the environment.

In fact they carry no cargo at all, and pose far less of a danger than many hundreds of vessels constantly, and uncontroversially, plying the seas, or already safely demolished at well-run facilities.

They do contain asbestos, but so do most other old ships - built into the structures for insulation and fire protection. They also have hazardous chemicals called PCBs, but only as part of everyday and universal products such as electrical cable and paint. Neither pose any threat to the environment where they are.

They would only become hazardous if stripped out by demolition workers without proper controls.

The environmentalists have also made much of the oil carried by the ships. But the 13 that could eventually be dismantled in Hartlepool - including the nine that have not yet left US shores - have just 3,500 tonnes between them, a tiny fraction of the amount carried by a single oil tanker. One of the "toxic timebombs" about to dock, the Caloosahatchee, has just one tonne of oil aboard. None of this would pose any danger to the oceans even if the entire fleet sank in the Atlantic on the way to Britain.

Nor does it pose any real threat to Britain's coasts. And even Greenpeace admits that "the actual conditions under which the ships will be scrapped (at Hartlepool) are far more advanced than those which are employed on the majority of ships".

There are some real issues at stake. The Hartlepool yard did not have the correct planning permissions and had not carried out an adequate assessment of the impact the operation might have on the environment. This needs to be put right, not least because it is possible, in the absence of proper precautions, that an oil spill could pollute an important wildlife site nearby.

It is worrying, too, that the Bush administration has lifted a ban imposed by President Clinton on allowing US ships containing hazardous materials to be sent for scrapping overseas.

But the real cause for concern is that they will join the hundreds of vessels already being dismantled every year, with no safety precautions at all, on beaches on the Indian subcontinent. It would be preferable, of course, if they were taken apart in good US facilities, but shipyards like Hartlepool are the next best thing.

But the extreme reaction in Britain is likely to ensure that the next "ghost fleets" head for the Third World instead. And that would pose a real threat to the health of workers and the environment alike.

Geoffrey Lean is Environment Editor of the Independent on Sunday