Discharge of scrubber water into the Baltic Sea is responsible for hundreds of millions in costs

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Discharge from ships with so-called scrubbers cause great damage to the Baltic Sea. A new study from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, shows that these emissions caused pollution corresponding to socioeconomic costs of more than €680 million (approximately $730 million) between 2014 and 2022.

At the same time, the researchers note that the shipping companies' investments in the much-discussed technology, where exhaust gases are "washed" and discharged into the sea, have already been recouped for most of the ships. This means that the industry is now making billions of euros by running its ships on cheap heavy fuel oil instead of cleaner fuel.

"We see a clear conflict of interest, where private economic interests come at the expense of the marine environment in one of the world's most sensitive seas," says Chalmers doctoral student Anna Lunde Hermansson, who is one of the authors of the new study, published in Nature Sustainability.

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