{"id":41543,"date":"2022-02-09T21:41:39","date_gmt":"2022-02-09T12:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2022\/feb\/09\/cargo-ship-disasters-are-oil-spills-of-our-time-because-of-health-risk-from-plastic"},"modified":"2022-02-09T21:41:39","modified_gmt":"2022-02-09T12:41:39","slug":"oil-spills-of-our-time-experts-sound-alarm-about-plastic-lost-in-cargo-ship-disasters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=41543","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Oil spills of our time\u2019: experts sound alarm about plastic lost in cargo ship disasters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sri Lankan beaches buried in pellets only \u2018tip of the iceberg\u2019 of environmental harm after analysis of nurdles from burning ship<\/p>\n<p>Container ship accidents at sea should be considered the \u201coil spills of our time\u201d, warned environmental organisations that found a toxic mix of metals, carcinogenic and other harmful chemicals on plastic washed up on Sri Lanka\u2019s beaches after a cargo ship fire.<\/p>\n<p>When the X-Press Pearl sank off nine nautical miles off Colombo, Sri Lanka\u2019s capital, in May 2021, the most \u201csignificant harm\u201d from the country\u2019s worst maritime disaster initially came from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2021\/nov\/29\/nurdles-plastic-pellets-environmental-ocean-spills-toxic-waste-not-classified-hazardous\">spillage of 1,680 tonnes<\/a> of plastic pellets, or \u201cnurdles\u201d, into the Indian Ocean. They were found in dead dolphins, fish and on beaches \u2013 in some places 2 metres deep. A <a href=\"https:\/\/postconflict.unep.ch\/Sri%20Lanka\/X-Press_Sri%20Lanka_UNEP_27.07.2021_s.pdf\">UN report<\/a> called it the \u201csingle largest plastic spill\u201d in history.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2022\/feb\/09\/cargo-ship-disasters-are-oil-spills-of-our-time-because-of-health-risk-from-plastic\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sri Lankan beaches buried in pellets only \u2018tip of the iceberg\u2019 of environmental harm after analysis of nurdles from burning shipContainer ship accidents at sea should be considered the \u201coil spills of our time\u201d, warned environmental organisations that f&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":461,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,65,346,468,467,266,466,1980,79,61,674,94,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-environment","category-health","category-marine-life","category-oceans","category-plastics","category-pollution","category-shipping-industry","category-society","category-south-and-central-asia","category-sri-lanka","category-wildlife","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/461"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41544,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41543\/revisions\/41544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}