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ships are like the celebrity stars of our ports. neeraj more luxury liners enter our harvest the industry is booming. german tourists go on cruises all year round even in the winter. choose to i like getting to see different places without having to unpack and repack my bags that i know there's all these bars and 17 restaurants but you always have your home right with you. but the ocean giants just glamorous that will so harmful to the environment there exhaust fumes contain sulfa nitrogen oxides and salt

particles people are now becoming more aware of the problem. it's terrible we're from s n n s n is clean now but that wasn't always the case here most people living on the coast always used to have clean fresh air now it's the other way around it is out of work yet. crews operators have responded to the growing criticism and saying their vessels have now become more environmentally friendly but tough they really. it's december he environment on the baltic sea me ever since cruise ship companies began offering more when to delist the hobby he is busy even. during the cold

months. germans on europe's top cruise ship customers with over 2000000 passengers in 2017 and asked the business increases so does the air pollution it causes we 1st visited vandeman day in 2014 when we spoke with local residents like magdalena fleming 5 years on when meeting her again magdalena ritchie moved to the namenda for the clean air crews operators have been promising ships with clean exhaust fumes for years now we asked magdaléna whether she feels they've kept that promise physically several has avoided i haven't gotten any cleaner i'm so angry and this video a little bring it up from time to time and you believe them you think the ships are finally going to get cleaner but then nothing happens to see it 1st it's all talk. but this is the newspapers are full of it but nobody's taking any action of a crime now left us. green boats and their dirty air

what a cruise operators doing about it. this is from michelle a port city on madeira in the atlantic ocean just north of the canary islands down here is a popular destination for winter cruises. most passengers on board a german tourists. we asked axel freedom to join us on this trip he's one of the world's leading experts on air pollution. right now he's setting up his instruments to measure the cruise ships and missions. xo fleet of a she used to head the department for transport annoyance at the german federal environment agency u b a and now regularly advises governments and environmental organizations. like all larger ships cruise liners emit pollutants into the air. the floating hotels need electricity 24 hours a day including when they are at port they get that energy from fuel generators.

the cruising line's international association or clear says it has recently adopted the exhaust gas cleaning systems e.g. c m s the association has reportedly fitted 111 of the 253 cruise ships in its fleet with the system. just how effective are the filters to find out actual freight of each will be monitoring emissions on 3 separate days. the equipment he uses measures nitrogen oxides so that sulfur dioxide and ultra fine particles. a cruise ship is approaching the harbor is exhaust plume is still only faintly visible axle for a delicious particularly interested in the amount of fine particles it contains 3 cruise ships have now docked at port. even at a distance axel fraser takes the quitman tos able to measure the particulates

matter of the crew ships a minute but the wind direction keeps changing so he can't say for sure which pollutants the coming from which. the portable device detects 65000 particles that's 3 times more than on some streets in germany where driving has already been banned. but this level is typical for busy small harbors like here. here again there's only room for 3 ships are dark here some only 3 ships are here but another course like barcelona brought in a group around as not to 7 ships in dock each day. the cruise industry does not consider a one off measurements like this to be significant yet the cruise operators won't provide us with more detailed information despite our request neither nor the 2 big german companies aida and toohey provided us with pollution levels.

x. that rate of age was invented monday in 2013 to measure the am pollution caused by cruise ships for the documentary series 45 minutes his film raised a lot of awareness for the problem. tourists sought out this seaside resort for its clean and that these days even the pedestrian zone has a pollution level similar to a busy traffic into sanction. the missing words are fine if i were measuring ultra fine particles that are smaller than 300 not a meters this extremely small matter can penetrate deep into the lungs. in some cases this can have fatal consequences the particles also come from the ship's exhaust the engines are powered with diesel or heavy oil. what kind of fuel is heavy oil. the keel water police explained it well in 2009 in a document. we find a public pool at constant point from pinching by shames. does

he this is all this is in english crude oil from the forty's and who the oil from the north sea. this is the stuff everyone is after onus is on their stuff the crude oil contains lots of components each one can be sold that are separately sized that's why crude oil is refined. and that often that the refinery crude oil gets broken down into its components there are gas components liquid components and also solid components i'm in at the end of this process and so there's this leftover we hear that they can no longer be refined and leaked out this is what power ships come on down the tranny shifter does a sort of major when i turn it upside down nothing happens that's how dense it is at room temperature it's like a road surface this is the stuff ships run on. no matter whether a ship is powered by heavy oil or diesel exhaust fumes will always contain 4 main

pollutants. carbon dioxide the greenhouse gas that majorly contributes to global warming. which you may know from say grain it also affects marine life. ringback nitrogen oxides also known as an ex they made headlines during the diesel scandal and are especially harmful to children pregnant women and sick people and finally atmospheric aerosol particles many studies have shown that ultra fine particulates matter is most dangerous and can lead to pneumonia heart attacks and strokes. is a chemist investigating the effects of fine particulate matter from ship exhaust fumes. in his research he collaborates with other chemists physicians and biologists from the german research center for environmental health. they use a special method to show how particulate matter is harmful to humans the research

is direct exhaust fumes from a ship's engine into their lap and expose it to living. human lung cells. here is the exposure that most experiments to date added the pollutants to a solution and you cells that were also in solution. that's not natural because lung cells are normally exposed. that's their characteristic feature and we managed to simulate that with this machine. here the cells are out in the open so to speak and take in air pollution like real dogs would. this is to date the closest. research has come to faithfully simulating the impact of ship exhaust on living human cells. in the early

5 generally speaking fine particles cause pulmonary information if you're exposed to particular matter over long periods of time that inflammation can become chronic chronic inflammation can be to cardiac diseases and permanent pulmonary inflammation which in turn can trigger or aggravate diseases like asthma c o p b. it's an invisible threat numerous studies have found the 10 nostrils only catch and filter particles larger than 10 micro meters. ultra fine particles are much smaller than even 2.5 micro meters with no barrier to stop them they can settle deep in our lungs. then they can trigger dangerous inflammation they can even enter our blood stream with severe consequences heart disease cardiac arrest or strokes if

the particles reach our brain. simmonds colleagues can identify each individual component particulates matter in ships exhaust fumes this lets them determine its precise effect on the human body up until a few years ago research suggested emissions from heavy oil were much more harmful to humans than diesel but more recent studies painted leak a picture. you know i mean let's the young feel we've looked at a number of different processes over the past 10 years anything from emissions from car engines to wood combustion this chip emissions have been found to have the biggest effect of war regardless of whether they use diesel or heavy oil. in the long run heavy oil has a larger cost of genet effect but they both have equally high acute effects like stuck. in their rust belt lab the scientists can also measure

pollutants emitted by ships as seen for this they suck the outside into the lab on windy days. the instruments are so sensitive that they can pick up pollutants emitted from ever 100 kilometers away. the team uses shipping routes and timetables to determine which vessel it's from. 29000 on the banks of the elbe or in hamburg. axel fate of his hand to measure the pollutant levels emitted by a cruise ship his portable device is ultra sensitive. the senior if you will know you were left to his foreign matter in the air here

even though the ship was far away when it was passing us the wind blew the other way but even at a distance of one kilo. i still get a reading of over 20000 particles and there's more not region dioxide to. $20000.00 aerosol particles that's roughly twice the average level in hamburg and the wind wasn't even blowing in the right direction. such as no filter the exhaust was being blown to the other side of the other by the people on that bank were exposed to the fumes. magdalena flemming from amanda continues to worry about her health. she suffers from asthma last year alone she saw 199 cruise ships docked here it was nice but i'm not sure if it's still healthy for me here. it's just getting worse. and i'm concerned for my children my grandchildren. i already have 3

great grandchildren the hips and i will include. and how ditty is the extreme boats are emitting. this ship's joshua tells us that all the cruise ships operated for them always that hit the official regulations in the baltic sea and elsewhere. its shipping company says they are striving to operate their ships as skinny as possible but installing a filter isn't possible for technical reasons. we also spoke with several passengers. well i know cruise ships are dirty but i don't know the exact numbers. but sure they're big polluters to see john's section or that it's really just that one has just been so that worries me a lot yes they are still taking a cruise i'm still taking a cruise. in hamburg some roads have been blocked your car pollution but here in the harbor the ships let their engines run day and night and they're filthy you can

see the black clouds above them blast out. oh it's terrible they're from s. and s. and it's clean now but that wasn't always the case people living on the coast always used to have a clean fresh air now it's the other way around. in the german climate computing center in hamburg researchers have calculated how ham pollutants have to spin us through northern germany the results were saying bring. fine particles from ships on the health risks they bring with them have spread across the entire north of germany. and cruise line isn't just making matters worse . i was shocked at how deeply ship emissions impacted areas not directly by the coast sometimes the effects could be seen hundreds of kilometers inland one

kilometer long and that's. what we were taken aback when we realised just how much came from ship traffic before we thought sure there are 10000 ships sailing in the north sea but what damage can they possibly do compared to 50000000 cars. but if you look at the pollutants if you added how much is emitted per kilometer per ton of goods. you find it's much higher with ships than with cars. and most people don't know if even further inland the air we breathe by ships out at sea. cruise companies say they have taken action to become more environmentally sustainable. this is kill at the end of january $29000.00 wherein you to a ship is being presented. just like the other operators this large cruise ship is

equipping its new ships with so-called self a school bus and catalytic converters they're meant to reduce alpha dioxide emissions by up to 99 percent and nitrogen oxides by up to 75 percent the additions are also meant to significantly decrease the amount of particulate matter released into the atmosphere but it's hard to tell just how effective the equipment is. the cruise companies stay they. get up we achieve excellent values with the after treatment of emissions some are even better than marine diesel values. the company office similarly generic statements 2 thirds of the questions that mattered in writing so it remains unclear whether self described as can actually reduce health risks. you have to distinguish between environmental and health impacts sulfur emissions are known from acid rain i can be very harmful to the environment but the effect of sulphur on our health is rather limited.

from 2020 onwards the level of south of permitted in ship fuel will be restricted to 0.5 percent that might sound good at 1st but 0.5 percent is still $500.00 times higher than what is permitted encounter fuel. on the baltic sea the sulfur content cap is set at 0 point one percent that still $100.00 times more fuel. nevertheless shipping companies are looking to scrap has to remain commercially viable. because scrap strips from heavy oil as it companies can keep relying on cheap fuel and simply wash it with. back to the port a flu shot accidentally she's trying to measure whether the ship's here have scrubbers. but again wind conditions are unfavorable. the

fishmonger scrubber works well and reduce oil for dioxide emissions by about 8590 percent but other issues like ultra fine particles remain unchanged that's why toohey was brighter used a bit more than the other crystal manufacturers because they got a little better but they're still far from good words and enough money. in january 29th teen one of the boats influentials home was to ease mind shift imes. the ship is reportedly equipped with an exhaust gas purification system. according to the company it filters out 60 percent of atmospheric aerosol particles emitted. we asked whether this also included ultra fine particulate matter but we didn't receive an answer nor will we provided with any detailed emission values. part of the problem is the international maritime organization imo.

the united nations agency has so far failed to set a limit for particulate matter emissions. this means it's up to experts like axel free to race to point out the risks its 4 am in from shock and axle freight and his waiting for the i need to know about the ships technology has a will novelty we've all seen the we want to see what the emissions of aida's new ship are alaska it's a completely new ship soured by a liquefied natural gas so we mission levels should be considerably below those of ordinary cruise ships and would force a shift. aida nova is the 1st cruise ship in the worlds to run with the new technology. in theory it does not emits nitrogen oxides sulfa or particulate matter into the air but acts elfrida they still have to wait for another day to verify

those claims the wind is keeping the exhaust gases out at sea away from the measuring instruments is the wind salaam favorable you know very. well if you're going to recall this wind. the ship is also a quick to be able to run on ordinary fuel. wintergreen kind of ship can also run on diesel it has 2 tracks on board so it would have been good to see what i eat is using what is this far away from hamburg. for now he'll have to wait a day later informed us that it wasn't possible to measure the air quality on the ship that day they said they would invite axel freighter based on board to measure soon though but it remains to be seen when that will actually happen. and at 1st loans i need to know if his chimney looks clean you know. other cruise companies have announced they want to follow suit.

not to we however the cruise line wants to do without an equal fight natural gas for the time being as there are currently only few ports that offer refueling possibilities. do passengers even care about the natural gas technology. for months i don't think about it it is important. but i think this is the 1st ship with liquid natural gas let's see helpings developed i think it's good i grew 3 thoughts it certainly affected my decision i wanted to be on this ship. as it's quieter. or eco friendly yeah that too is protecting the environment a factor in your decision. for being honest not really well with a i've heard about it. but it wasn't the deciding factor for us. one problem is that madeira doesn't yet have a fueling point for liquid natural gas that is large enough for the i need a nova. so

tangos like the contessa have to travel over 1500 nautical miles from rotterdam to the high atlantic seas to refuel the new i need a ship it's a long and expensive journey. and i need a ship is being serviced in hamburg according to company figures the i need a fleet consumed over 50 percent more heavy oil and diesel in 2017 compared to 2011 the cruise line says more and more of its ships are being a quipped with quote modern exhaust gas purification systems but it remains unclear which systems these entailed exactly and whether they also filter out harmful ultra fine particles. it seems northern germany still enjoys the potion of this of its not free cruise line as. anyone protests. hamburg is even planning a 4th cruise terminal it will be the 2nd one in the half in city district right by

a residential area. meanwhile in other european cities more and more citizens and politicians feel that the cruise line industry has got big enough. the city of venice is a unesco world heritage site and a popular cruise destination in europe. cruise lines ponce straight by the city's top attractions. but they don't totally block the view from locals they will say pollute the air.