The Importance of Monitoring Indoor Air Quality Onboard Ships

 

Looking to land-based environmental health and safety, extensive research from the 1980s and 1990s has demonstrated the negative impacts of "sick buildings" on employee health and productivity. Research studies have established a link between exposure to poor indoor air quality (IAQ) and a range of respiratory issues, including cough, asthma, and heart arrhythmia, even in otherwise healthy individuals. Not surprisingly, general allergens—particulate matter, volatile organic carbon, mold, and bacteria—have been identified as key causes for such issues. Given this knowledge, maintaining healthy air quality on ships is crucial not only for improving seafarers’ happiness, wellbeing, and productivity, but also for reducing the risk of workplace accidents.

To ensure decent living conditions that support seafarer safety as well as decent living and working conditions, international organizations have developed guidelines and requirements to protect seafarers, such as the International Maritime Organization Code on noise levels on board ships (Resolution MSC.337(91), 2012) and the International Labour Convention Maritime Labour Convention (MLC, 2006). The MLC sets high-level standards for provisions like drinking water, food, and ventilation. That said, the MLC leaves the specific prescriptive monitoring limits to individual parties to determine.

Many countries have regulations and guidelines in place to set limits on a variety of IAQ parameters, with a handful of countries enforcing the regulations (Dimitroulopoulou et al., 2022; e.g., ANSI/ASHARE Standard 62.1, 2021, which sets requirements for ventilation). In practice, administrations—apart from Brazil—tend not to require strict IAQ monitoring on board ships. More often, such requirements are generated through requirements from Classification societies, for example, the Comfort Class notation from DNV. Here, comfort is evaluated to achieve ratings from “acceptable” to “high” based on noise and vibration (COMF-V) and indoor climate (COMF-C; DNV, 2014). However, the requirement is not widely implemented, nor are ships’ compliance with it reviewed in an ongoing basis by an independent third-party testing organization.

To assess IAQ, we sampled 13 vessels, collecting 530 measurements across 12 physical, chemical, and biological parameters. The results revealed concerning findings when benchmarked against Singapore's IAQ standards (SS554, 2021). While ships met the limits for carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide levels, 5% of the measurements exceeded the limits for total volatile organic compounds.

Temperature can be more difficult to control on ships compared to buildings, and, indeed, the limits were not always met in this dataset (70% noncompliance). Likewise, particulate matter (PM) values were too high in some cases: respirable dust (PM 4 µm) showed 15% noncompliance, and PM2.5 (PM 2.5 µm) showed 8% noncompliance. Finally, 11% of the samples tested for total airborne bacteria were above the limits, although no mold values exceeded the limit.

These results indicate that in most cases, at least one parameter for IAQ on ships exceeded the recommended occupational and public health standards. This highlights the need for proactive air-quality maintenance to ensure the well-being of crew members who are can be exposed to unfavorable or unhealthy for extended periods.

Regular monitoring can help ship owners and managers make informed decisions about ventilation and living conditions, benchmark air quality across their fleet, and incorporate air quality into their corporate sustainability goals and key performance indicators.

Guillaume Drillet (PhD) is the Regional Manager of Marine Services for Asia and Pacific at SGS, the world's leading testing, inspection and certification company. He has 20 years of experience in public and private sectors dealing with Environmental Health and Safety issues.

Khairul Irfan is the Operation Manager of the Environmental Health and safety teams of SGS Singapore and has >10 years of experience monitoring worker’s exposures to environmental stressors such as air quality and noise.

Umid Joshi (PhD) is the Technical Manager of the Environmental Health and Safety teams of SGS Singapore and has >20 years of experience monitoring workers’ exposures to environmental stressors such as air quality and noise.

Lisa Drake (PhD) manages SGS Marine Services for the Americas. She—along with a team of experts—guides this work in >600 ports worldwide. Her career addressing marine, global environmental issues has spanned academia, government, and the private sector.