A ship lined with tonnes of asbestos returned to the port of Amsterdam on Monday after it was rejected at its Turkish destination because of the toxic, cancer-causing material. It was turned away by a Turkish wharf that was supposed to clean the Otapan because the amount of asbestos was much bigger than expected, a spokeswoman of the Dutch Environment Ministry said.

"There was a lot more asbestos in the ship than the ships documents suggested, about 56 tonnes instead of 1,000 kilos," she said. The Otapan had been moored in the Amsterdam port for seven years as authorities were trying to find a solution to deal with the asbestos with its Mexican owners, the spokeswoman said.

"We will have some companies take a look at the ship now, they will hand in proposals and then a firm will be chosen to reduce the asbestos to 1,000 kilos," she said adding that the new owners wanted the ship back in Turkey by June. Greenpeace Netherlands criticised the Environment Ministry for not establishing the exact amount of poisonous material in the ship before sending it off to Turkey.

The environmental group also said the chosen wharf in Turkey was not able to handle the removal of toxic material in an environmentally-friendly way. "The Netherlands should not export their environmental problems into less prosperous countries," Greenpeace said.
(Planet Akt, 18/10/2006)
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