of metropolitan areas, the recyclers, and ships calling at the ports may help promote the business case for the development of such facilities. In addition, the inventories of hazardous materials onboard can be carried out while at port to improve the information on the location of hazardous materials on ships. The facilities can also be used for training and testing equipment to facilitate detection of hazardous conditions by the yard staff. The issues This issues paper highlights the procedures and practices adopted in the disposal of obsolete ships originating from the world fleet of merchant vessels with an emphasis on occupational safety and health administration (OSHA) issues and on environmental aspects as ship-breaking is undertaken today by the world-breaking majors on beachheads in Asia. The paper outlines disposal practices including those of: 1.
decommissioning and sale for scrapping;
2. demolition – principles of the breaking process; and 3. disposal and recycling methods, with a focus on safe work. It reviews existing legal and regulatory tools and makes an assessment of recent and previous work undertaken elsewhere by concerned agencies, national and international institutions and organizations, governments, NGOs and other stakeholders. Conclusions, recommendations and other relevant information from these organizations including plans for future work are presented. Based on inputs from the abovementioned activities, the paper elaborates on these findings with the objective of identifying specific measures and actions that may be undertaken in the future by the ILO. Summary A ship consists mostly of steel. Consequently, at the end of its useful life, it becomes a soughtafter source of ferrous scrap particularly suited for reprocessing into simple steel products such as steel rods used in civil engineering. The geographical migration of scrapping locations mirrors global industrial economic development. It seeks areas providing: