The Shipbreakers

I ran across pictures of this while doing research for settings for my novels. Both fascinating and heartbreaking.

Oceangoing vessels are not meant to be taken apart. They’re designed to withstand extreme forces in some of the planet’s most difficult environments, and they’re often constructed with toxic materials, such as asbestos and lead. When ships are scrapped in the developed world, the process is more strictly regulated and expensive, so the bulk of the world’s shipbreaking is done in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, where labor is cheap and oversight is minimal.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/05/shipbreakers/gwin-text