Cruise ship docked in Victoria Harbour. The TyeeBy Andrew MacLeod, Today, TheTyee.ca

Cruise ship tourists milling about the streets of Victoria are more likely to encounter inviting smiles than frowns. But many residents worry about air pollution from the big vessels — and a newly available study appears to confirm those fears, tripling the previous official estimate of local toxic sulphur dioxide emissions. Over the past decade, the number of cruise visits has grown from none to more than 200 a year. On some summer days, five of the giant vessels pull up, each unloading thousands of passengers for a few hours of bus tours and horse carriage rides. In a city where tourism is a major pillar of the economy, everyone from the city council to the Chamber of Commerce has welcomed the visits — and the bulk of news coverage has focused on the number of dollars being left in the city rather than on any negative impacts. But an angrier response to the trend can be glimpsed on the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority’s website where a community member complains about air quality near the city’s cruise ship docks. “The inaction by the GVHA to provide an effective solution to stopping cruise ship emissions being pumped into the residential areas of James Bay can be best described as criminal neglect,” he wrote. “Eventually, we will reach the point of demanding compensation from the GVHA for its unwillingness to resolve this ongoing act of environmental terrorism being impacted upon our community.” On the website, a GVHA official responds by pointing to the James Bay Air Quality Study (JBAQS), a report that was ordered to appease the cruise industry’s few naysayers — most of whom live in James Bay homes a few hundred metres from the Ogden Point docks. … But the authors of a newly available air quality report from Nov. 2009 — based on data from 2008 and just posted to the Capital Regional District’s website — found that VIHA’s study had grossly underestimated the pollutants that cruise ships spew out around Victoria. “SO2 [sulfur dioxide] concentrations in the vicinity of Ogden Point may be much higher than was estimated in the JBAQS, and may be high enough in the James Bay community to be of concern for human health impacts in that area,” wrote the authors of the Air Quality in the Capital Regional District report. The James Bay study appears to have underestimated by a factor of three the amount of sulphur dioxide emitted by cruise ships, they found. Even at relatively low levels, the gas harms plants. In higher concentrations, it can make it harder to breathe for people with respiratory diseases like asthma or bronchitis. Measurements for both studies were made at the Topaz site on the opposite side of downtown, several kilometres from Ogden Point. The James Bay study estimated that the sulphur dioxide concentrations at Ogden Point would be five times as high as what was measured at Topaz. …

In Victoria, Cruise Ships Spew More Toxins than Assumed: Study