sea dumping

The convention is a UN body responsible for the regulation of sea dumping.

Strathclyde believes it could developed environmentally safe sea dumping.

Scientists concluded that the strong opposition of the public and congress to sea dumping is the result of "environmental hysteria".

But the battle over the sea dumping of nuclear waste, dramatic as it became, represented only a small fraction of a much larger problem.

The London Convention, which prevents sea dumping, expires.

Sea dumping was put forward as one of the few remaining ways to halt further pollution of land and air from landfills and incineration.

Material suitable for deep sea dumping included sewage sludge, industrial waste, and toxic ashes left after the incineration of garbage.

Whilst the search for a high-level waste burial site had been shelved, a climax was also being reached over the vexed issue of sea dumping.

The recent article on sea dumping of nuclear waste by Christopher Joyce (This Week, 10 February, p 352) contains several potentially misleading statements.

At an international meeting here last week, some argued that deep sea dumping of sewage sludge should not be ruled out, despite the concern of environmentalists and statutory retraints.

"Sea Dumping Ban: Good Politics, but Not Necessarily Good Policy" (front page, March 22) reports debate on the cost-effectiveness of such measures.

Sea dumping was used by the U.S. Army to dispose of World War II lewisite stocks prior to Geranium.

Italy was one of the 64 countries which voted in support of the global ban on sea dumping last November, under which member countries are required to prosecute ships who violate the ban.

House Hearing Planned The House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee agreed in November to hold hearings early next year to consider allowing deep sea dumping for research purposes only.

Britain was one of a number of European countries to take part in the annual sea dumping, which included the disposal of radioactive materials used in hospitals and research laboratories as well as waste from nuclear power.

Burial at sea within Australian territorial waters, exclusive economic zone and continental shelf is covered by the Environmental Protection (Sea Dumping Act) 1981 administered by the federal Department of the Environment.

Britain has the support of other nuclear states including the US, Japan and France in opposing a Danish proposal to turn the current 10-year-old moratorium on sea dumping of radioactive waste into a permanent ban.

Kevin Dunion, FoE's Scottish director, said he was delighted that Strathclyde had accepted that it could win no exemption from the European directive that bans sea dumping from the start of 1999.

The second phase of the project was completed in November when marine engineers here and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology introduced concepts for self-propelled, unmanned undersea vehicles that would monitor the safety of a deep sea dumping site.

World-wide legislation on sea dumping is strict and does not allow, under stringent penalties, any ships or sea vessels to dump waste, gray water, or even ballast water that has been collected in a remote geographic location due to the danger of biological contamination.

During my own research into sea dumping at the time, I was told that in 1976 a team from the Atomic Energy Authority had been called in to decontaminate the Topaz, a ship used to dump Belgian waste, after the wrong type of drum container had been used.

Formal protests were made by Sweden, Denmark, Norway and West Germany, all parties (as was the UK) to an eight-country agreement in November 1987 supporting a ban on North Sea dumping of all "harmful industrial wastes" by the end of 1989 [see pp. 36052-53].