The United States of America and Its Asbestos Traces on the Sevastopol Shore

Investigation done by Tatyana Bus Rikhtun  and published in Sevastopolskaya Gazeta July 12.-18. 2007

Stories about dozens of tons of asbestos that were dismantled and removed from an American liner and stored at the Sevastopol marine plant from the previous century made us look for answers to two questions: What was the ship? Why is this dangerous waste preserved on the seashore?

The last winner of the prize for crossing the Atlantic
Thanks to the former director of the Sevastopol marine plant Anatoliy Cherevatoy, I was able to find a website, which stated that in June 1952 the flagship of the company United States Lines, the liner United States was launched. The liner cost 80 million dollars, half of which was contributed by the Pentagon, which intended to use the ship as a transportation vehicle able to move 14 thousand soldiers for 10 thousand miles without stopping. According to the magazine America, the ship was built through a project by William Gibbs, a descendent from a Russian immigrant family.

On July 3, 1952 the ship made its maiden voyage from New York to Europe. In 82 hours and 40 minutes, with an average speed of 35.39 knots (69.95 km/hr), she covered 5465 kilometers to set a new record for fastest crossing of the Atlantic. She was awarded with the prize, Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic. After that, the ocean races were abolished.   

It was a luxurious liner, just as was expected from a ship with the name United States. It was very comfortable for passengers and had air conditioning in all rooms, two theaters, Turkish baths, movie theaters, concert halls, gyms, swimming pools, and public gathering places like music and smoking parlors, plus office rooms. Even looking at the blueprints of the liner, which we found in the archives of the modeler Vladimir Adeyev, reflect the beauty of the technical masterpiece.

As passengers noted, speeds at over 30 knots did not even cause dishes to clank. CNN anchor Frank Buckley named the ship United States, a symbol of America. All American VIPs were cited taking tours on this ship. Mickey Mouse creator Walt Disney was so impressed by this ship that he shot his movie, Bon Voyage on the deck of this ship. The ship was popular between with shipbuilders as well - similar shapes and engines were later installed on most military ships.

Asbestos coffin

However, in 1969, after 400 trips, the owners of the speedy queen of the ocean cancelled a long-planned cruise around the world, and announced that the ship will stay in dock indefinitely. Its speed and usefulness dulled because of the wider popularity of jetliners. And also because of the protests of ecologists. The United States was more and more frequently called an “asbestos coffin.” The thing is – while the ship was being built, in order to secure fire safety, asbestos sheets were used everywhere. Onboard, pretty much everything was made from asbestos, including window shields, armchairs and beds. Reporters used to say that the only wood on the liner was a piano and the butcher’s cutting board.

In four years, the liner was bought by the federal government and put aside for possible remodeling into a military boat. In another three years, the liner was put up for sale for just 12 million dollars. However, until 1992, the boat has been docked at Newport News (USA), just deteriorating. It seemed that the only future awaiting it was recycling. In April 1992 the owner of the dock, with years of unpaid invoices for the ship’s dock forced the auction of what was left of the ship. To everybody’s amazement, four buyers were interested in it. The company Marmara Marine from Manhatten won the auction, having paid 2.6 million dollars for the ship. Its director Fred Meyer immigrated to the US on the United States in the 60s. He and his partner, Turkish shipowner Kakhraman Sadikoglu, announced that they will spend about 145 million dollars to remodel the ship and make a super fashionable cruise liner out of it. The ship was towed to the wharf on Istanbul to start repairs.

Export of the dangerous waste

At approximately the same time, Greenpeace activists began protesting. As we were able to find out from the head of Greenpeace’s campaign against Burying Asbestos from the United States, Jim Paket, “Greenpeace activists were begging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to stop the transportation of the ship to Turkey under an American flag. The EPA did not take any measures against it. The ship’s owner finally moved her to Sevastopol where for us it was much harder to stop this process.”

Why? A participant of the protests in Sevastopol, former representative of Greenpeace in Ukraine Aleksey Kabuka answered this question: “Officially, there is no ban in Ukraine against asbestos, and back in those times neither was there a prohibition against the importing of dangerous waste. This is why it was impossible to legally stop the ship from coming in. The arguments in this discussion were all in the area of international practices in this matter, public opinion and information about the dangers of asbestos.”

Sadikoglu himself put forward other reasons for the United States to be moved to Sevastopol. According to him, he was forced to move the ship to the Sevastopol marine plant because its dock is the biggest in Europe. Unlike the general public, this man that had a business deal with a Turkish ship-owner knew better that the docks like in Sevastopol were also in Kerch, Mykolaiv, not even talking about Europe.

Business deal of the century

By 1993, 15 thousand workers of the Sevastopol marine plant were almost unemployed. The famous words from the International came true in reverse: those that had everything became nothing. Shipbuilders always had good salaries and social benefits suddenly were left without a means to exist. People were left without salaries for months; management tried to find projects wherever they could. According to the head of production at the Sevastopol marine plant, Vasiliy Poltorak, said that once the chief engineer of the plant Ilya Yashchykov, nowadays an Israeli citizen, told him that a German shipowner, Mr. Meyer, offered a project to clean up an American ship. V. Poltorak shared his idea with A. Cherevatyy and got the approval. In another week, Yashchykov and Poltorak went to Istanbul for negotiations. “In the beginning, we were talking about the contract with some Germans – must be mediators – then with another delegation of German mediators. Only on the third day were we taken by helicopter to the personal yacht of owner, who was a Turk. It was Sadikoglu. The day was spent on investigating 11 docks,” remembers V. Poltorak. “After that, I calculated how many people it will be necessary to remove all inner structures in three months just as the owner wanted. It turned out that we needed 1400 workers working three shifts. The value of the contract was 3 million, 200 thousand dollars.

Just to compare, last year 50 million euros offered to the Indians for removal of 115 tons of asbestos from the ship Klemanso did not persuade them and the aircraft carrier full of waste went back to France.

“Nobody talked about the danger of asbestos, but in the agreement there was a point in which it said that the Turkish side would supply special clothing, respirators and work tools,” adds V. Poltarak.

Docking with challenges

“Sevastopol is hardly surprised by the ship. However, on the morning of November 2, 1993 there was an unusual ship on the horizon,” remembers Vitaliy Kostrichenko. “The tugboat Podvodnik Marinesko  (formerly CC-21), being escorted by the small antisubmarine MPK-116 brought the liner United States to the main base of Chornomor fleet. For a long time the liner was prohibited from entering Sevastopol – protests from Greenpeace and city authorities made the ship idle in the sea. A military chemical investigation boat KRKh-321 went around the liner a couple of times and took samples of the water around it, but did not detect radioactive elements in it, nor a raise in ambient radioactivity. Head of the city council and president’s representative in Sevastopol Ivan Yermako said in 1993 that after talks about the materials on the ship being dangerous to the environment, he created a committee to investigate the danger of the ship docking in Sevastopol within two months. The committee announced that there is no danger of an ecological catastrophe for the city by the ship: “Control samples of air and water for radiation and chemical dangers proved to be negative.”

Also maybe city authorities were calmed by a telegram from Sadikogly: “We notify you that our ship has no weapon, ammunition, drugs, toxic materials, liquids or chemicals onboard.”

However, according to witnesses, once a man came around the already docked ship in Sevastopol wearing a bright yellow suit that looked like a spacesuit – it was the chief sanitation doctor from Odesa steamship division. He opened a briefcase that had a mobile laboratory in it and walked on the ship where the work had not yet started, taking air samples. He found the same results as military ecologists – there is no radioactive danger.

So where did the version of the radioactive and chemical danger of the United States come from? Maybe the official report from Greenpeace can answer the question, but this would be mean international investigation of an entirely different level. Based on well-known facts, we can assume that the ship was filled up with toxic waste in order to prevent it from destruction. Later, in 1973, the U.S. Marine Administration put forward a set of measures to dehydrate the ship. As later the engineer from Sevastopol marine plant, Mikhail Nochvin mentioned that the ship made a strange impression: “It seemed like everyone was evacuated from the ship in a big hurry for some very serious reason. Mechanisms were ready to start working and the galley was filled with food. Even the mashed potatoes that was cooked was still in the pot.” Everybody remembered that there was a horrible stench reminiscent of the smell of cockroach poison. 
 

A piece of American luxury to remember

All plant employees came to see the ship and brought their friends with them to see it. Journalists, scientists, and shipbuilders tried to get on the ship by any means, especially that the full power of the main engines was still secret. Nobody knew about the underwater lines or form and location of the fore propellers. According to V. Kostrichenko, who knows military technology very well, during all of the time of the ship’s use, only three boilers were used and the fourth steam boiler never worked, but still allowed the ship to move at record speeds. Talking about mileage, only the Soviet Leningrad could compete with the United States.

Andrey Lubyanov, a reporter, painter, and shipbuilder at the time, was most impressed by her library. The bookshelves from the ceiling to the floor were filled with nice published books and guides from around Europe. “As I was later told, the books were loaded on the truck and burned,” said A. Lubyanov.

I think that some people in Sevastopol might boast about having books from the library of the United States. This is how we came across the topic of looting. In an article presented by A. Cherevaty, it says that, “Real looting started on the liner. People were trying to steal everything – linoleum, furniture, accessories and wall panels. The best pieces came into the possession of plant and city management – providing “foreign” luxury in their family country homes, but even regular employees were not left out.”

Did the looting really take place? The plant’s staff does not talk about it themselves, but with big pleasure they point to those next to them, stating that one person has dishes from the ship, others have mirrors, and others have the ship’s cushions at home. The committee organized in 1999 to save the United States calculated that property worth five million dollars was stolen from the ship.

Reference 1

United States

Length – 291.28 meters, width – 30.96 meters, depth – 10.98 meters, displacement 51000 tons, officially announced power of the turbines EU – 23500 horsepower. The liner was meant to carry 1962 passengers.

Reference 2

Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic Prize

The first owner of the silver cup Ribbon of the Atlantic was Rex. Then, the Normandy, Queen Mary and then the United States. According to marinist, L.N. Skryagina, the prize looks like this: “On a large stand made from onyx, there are statues of Victory with wings holding the globe. Between the victorious statues, there is the legendary God of the sea, Neptune and his wife Amphitrite. On the globe, there is the Atlantic Ocean painted with blue paint. There is a wide, red strip from New York to London across the whole ocean – it is the route the ships were fighting for. The globe is surrounded by wide rings with four transatlantic ships depicted: Great Western, whose race with Sirius started the contest for the trophy and three winners of the ribbon, Mauritania, Rex and Normandy.

On four sides of the globe, in the shape of old compass markers, there are the four directions of the wind. On the very top there are two fighting figures: one symbolizes the Atlantic Ocean and the other – human mind and strength that overcomes nature and drives the modern liner. The height of the sculpture is 1.2 meters, made out of silver and weighs 18 kilograms. 

Asbestos – Instruction on Destruction

Then why do so many people not take the danger seriously? I guess there are two reasons. Firstly, disease symptoms caused by inhalation of asbestos dust might not appear for 5-10 years and sometimes the disease can remain dormant for 40 years. Secondly, our present Ukrainian standards on sanitation, labor protection, and ecology are still copied from Soviet Union legislation that was written in the middle of the last century.

In the Sevastopol marine plant, there was an isolation department that worked with this material. According to the former head of the trade union of the factory, Vladimir Snetkov, workers from this department received early retirement benefits due to labor conditions. However, there was one condition for those employers to have worked in such harmful industrial conditions for 12.5 years. Having worked for just one year didn’t provide for any benefits, not talking about those that worked on the United States for half a year.
Before work started on the ship, according to newspapers of the time, “the plant put a special order for the development of safe technological work conditions for employees.”

- “So trade unions were involved in the approval of the work on the United States?”
- “Yes, we were invited to the big closing dinner,” remembered V. Sitnev.
- “But how about the approval of labor inspectors?”
- “They must have bribed and bought it,” was the supposition of the trade union leader.

Now it is clear why the gas masks were substituted for respirators. Now it is impossible to find out how the work on the United States was organized. According to State Archive Deputy Director in Sevastopol Natalya Tereshchuk, the Sevastopol marine plant did not submit – even though it should have – documentation to the state archives since 1985. The plant itself does not have these documents anymore. According to the press service of the plant, the documents were destroyed during the plant’s privatization and breakdown in 36 private companies.

According to the very descriptive words of Mikhail Nochvin, half a year on the ship cost me years off my life. As he said, before starting work, there was a mandatory medical exam. So those with a cough, running nose and other cold symptoms were not allowed to work. There was nobody that would refuse to work of their own will. Of course the dust was in the air so badly that we couldn’t see anything. But for the shipbuilders, it was nothing new. Each of us got a battery-powered flashlight. Time to time, the air was cleaned by water filters. I tried to find out if the staff was paid additionally for the harmful conditions. “No, because there was no payroll breakdown for this work,” says M. Nochvin.

In five years, 750 workers cleaned the whole ship to the very last inch. Women were repeatedly washing the decks cleaned of asbestos by mops. “All the washing would be done in the evening. The next morning, a representative of the owner would come, find dust on the surface, and women would was the whole large ship again,” said M. Nochvin. According to A. Lubyanov, the Turks were very careless in regards to Sevastopol marine plant workers. They, in return, made a nice memorable pin that said “Newport News USA 1952 – United States – 1994 Istanbul Sevastopol.” It was presented with great gratitude to the Turkish owners, including Sadikoglu at the farewell ceremony. A. Lubyanov painted a picture depicting the United States and the V. Adeyev workshop created a half meter long model of the liner.

Asbestos trace of the United States
After the cleanup, the ship left and the asbestos stayed regardless of the fact that, “the owner himself promised at a press conference that he was ready to take the asbestos to Turkey.” “One of the representatives of the city environmental protection department promised that asbestos would not stay in Sevastopol.”

There was more than 300 tons of asbestos stored after the cleanup on the territory of the Sevastopol marine plant – this is exactly the amount that was on the United States. Further events could be compared to a comet’s path – the closer it is to Earth, the shorter its tail and its traces would be more and more vague. It is very impossible now to calculate how many asbestos sheets were reused for fencing at the shipbuilder’s country homes. People are not very willing to talk about it, but they still share something.

- “How could one carry asbestos sheets out of a secret plant?”- I asked a former engineer from the Sevastopol marine plant.
- “Very easily. Trucks bringing materials to the plant’s storage facilities would enter the territory from Korabel’s side, but exit from the north part of the plant’s territory in Inkerman. To ask a driver to just help drop off a couple of sheets near my home was a normal thing. Nobody would check on him.

According to V. Poltorak, three hundred trains, 60 cars each filled with asbestos were taken to the culverts at the Ukrainian steppe in Mykolayiv region. Good story, but no facts. In the ecological act it says that there are documents “to ship 380 tons of asbestos waste to Kirovohrad region in 1995.”

Regardless of the persuasive math, during the regular oversight meeting in 1996, deputy head of the ecology department, Dina Ivanova found the asbestos storage:

- “I remember that horror until this day. That storage had bags with asbestos, many of which were torn in some places. The facility’s windows did not have glass; neither did it have any doors. We found twelve people and obliged them to repack the asbestos again and to seal the place hermetically so that asbestos dust would not spread

In April 1999, another asbestos horror, “On the outskirts of Sevastopol, more than 300 cubic meters of asbestos was found, dismantled during the liner United States’ remodeling work. “Head of the State department on
Environmental Safety, Nina Sopoleva, while interviewed by reporters evaluated the plant manager’s concealing facts as a criminal case that should lead to according responsibilities,” wrote newspaper Segodnya.” In half a year, another person was working in her place and asbestos remained in the same location.

According to the oversight report from October 5, 2001, ecologists persuaded the plant management to work on asbestos contaminated waste until April of the next year.

In 2002, there was one more brave person, prosecutor of Balaklava region, Yuriy Butsmak. He found out that on the territory of the “Sevastopol marine remodeling plant, in the closed hanger “Ocean,” there are 90 tons of asbestos waste kept loose and in plastic bags. According to the prosecutor’s opinion, the location of the indicated waste presented an ecological threat to the surrounding environment, the violation was obvious and could cause harm to state interests, unless it was immediately taken care of.” 

At the beginning of the next year, the prosecutor’s office warned the Sevastopol plant about filing a criminal case, and the Black Sea Inspection fined them. So after ten years, the question of where to take the waste – and according to the ecology and natural resources department control act, there are more than 200 tons of asbestos from the United States – was put up front.
Vladimir Artemenko, Head of the Ecology and Natural Resources Department in Sevastopol, offered a way out: pieces of asbestos would be tied together by cement into a monolith, but the company rejected this variant as very cost consuming. According to them, it was cheaper to just leave the asbestos waste with the city dump, as long as it is nicely fenced in. In the beginning, the asbestos waste was ranked at the lowest, fourth danger level, having received this official status from the Predneprovskiy regional center of toxic and medical evaluation of industrial waste. To the present day, there is no distinct definition of toxic levels of waste, neither are there principles for their classification or methodology for identifying their toxic level, such is the opinion of Dmitriy Mironyuk, doctor on community hygiene of the Donetsk Sanitary Epidemiological Station. “According to state sanitary rules from 1999, which were copied from the Soviet law from 1976, the danger level can be identified by an experiment or calculation according to six indicators. In the Russian Federation, it is calculated based on 23 indicators, plus on an experiment. The fourth level of danger must be measured only by an experiment,” says the doctor.

However, even waste from the fourth danger level can be taken to the dump only with the permission of city authorities. And that was not a problem at all. The sanitary epidemiological station allowed it first, they considered the threats of the Balaklava prosecutor’s office and then the ecological department approved of it as well, seeing that the sanitary epidemiological station had done it already. Surprisingly enough, the challenge came at the level of the dump since the one in Pervomayskaya Balka was illegal. Then, the company director’s arguments about the Sevastopol marine remodeling plant that it was the biggest taxpayer and contributor to Sevastopol’s budget and that fines would discredit the factory’s image persuaded the Head of the City Administration, Leonid Zhynko to give official permission to dump the asbestos there.

In three and a half years, the dump is still not working, but the asbestos was taken there anyways. On November 25, 2003 the case was closed with the joint act by Inspector from the City Administration Svetlana Ganenko and Head of the Pervomayskiy Dump S. Seregin. However, the administration did not check if all of the asbestos was removed, because form January 1, 2004 the territory close to the seashore fell into the jurisdiction of the Azov-Chernomorskiy Inspection Department. Did this department’s specialists deal with the Sevastopol marine company? Yes, as it turns out from their documents, they have checked mainly the documentation on ecological issues and the territory on Korabel’s side. However, the inspector Elena Patrikeyeva learned about the existence of the north territory in Inkerman from a reporter.

Moreover, Inspection department professionals have no idea that the hanger “Ocean” might still be housing remnants of asbestos. Maybe they should check on it? According to E. Patrikeyeva, it is possible, but not sooner than September.

A month ago the deputy director of the Sevastopol marine remodeling company Veniamin Valovik, confirmed that asbestos is still kept on the territory of the plant in Inkerman.

By the way

Foreign experience
Since approximately the end of April, the company Pancers will start the first EU equipment to utilize asbestos. The equipment set will use a microwave field with a productivity of 200-300 kg/hr. The waste will be preliminarily saturated with a special solution that will help absorb microwaves and quicken the destruction of the material structure of asbestos.

Reference 3
Asbestos – belongs to a group of thin-fibered minerals of the hydro silicate class of natural origin. In nature it is formed from ultra-eruptions of rock under hydrothermal water.

The uniqueness of this mineral is that it possesses one the richest combination of physical mechanical qualities – thermal resistance, low temperature and electrical conduction, high coefficient of friction, elasticity, durability, able to be woven, construction, absorbing quality and alkalinity. No other natural or artificial material has such a wide range of positive characteristics in one.
Crystalline asbestos – hydro silicate of magnesium. Its chemical formula is 3MgOCh2SiO2Ch2H2O. As we can see from the formula, this crystalline asbestos is not radioactive.

From the article of Doctor of Medical Science, Professor, Russian Academy of Medical Science representative H.F. Izmirov and Professor of the Construction Materials Department of the Moscow State Construction University K.N. Popov.

In 2006, Valentin Shestak, director of the Home of Nature said that in Inkerman at the stockhouse of the Sevastopol marine plant that there was 40 tons of asbestos left after the remodeling of the United States. It was impossible to believe it. Thirteen years later? It can’t be! However, the facts proved the opposite. Talking to ecologists and specialists of labor protection, we found out everybody knows about the danger of asbestos, but everybody evaluates its danger as insignificant. We often hear one and the same phrase: I have worked with asbestos and am still alive. It’s strange, but the mentality of western people makes everybody avoid contact with asbestos when one hears about its potential danger. Here it is vice-versa, we need undisputable proof – something like an ecological catastrophe – only that will make people and authorities think that its really dangerous. Therefore, is asbestos dangerous? As of this year, asbestos is prohibited in 60 countries of the world, among which are all 20 countries of the European Union. According to the Environmental Projection Organization of the UN, each year more than 90 thousand people on Earth die from lung cancer and breathing problems caused by asbestos.

Asbestos qualifies as a carcinogen of the first degree by international agencies on cancer research of the World Health Organization. There is no “safe” amount of asbestos for humans – any dose of asbestos can cause illness – say American scientists. Such diseases very often occur in construction workers, train track workers and auto-workers and ship builders. In the “Declaration on Asbestos” ratified by the Special Prevention Committee of the International Association of Social Care in 2004 in Pekin, it says that “during the entire 20th century asbestos was used to produce very different products. No matter what processes this material has gone through, its danger remained unrevealed. It took three decades of drawn-out fighting, as well as the creation of a good alternative to it, in order to widely ban asbestos in production and other uses.”

This investigation was supported by Scoop and is continued in the US by Irene Liu from center for Investigative Reporting for publication in the US, where SS United States is docked in Philadelphia as museums ship.

Original article