Shipping Pollution - can upper Penobscot bay handle all the carbon?

Commercial ships spew half as much particulate pollution as world's cars . Upper Penobscot Bay could become an asthma cluster area if Sears Island is turned into a containerport. The diesel fumes from ships, tugboats, trucks railroad enginees and derricks will create a stinking choking cloud over the upper Bay.

Here's a recent study of the issue of shipping air pollution:

Daniel Lack, a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s Earth System Research Laboratory has just published results of a government study finding that that globally, commercial ships emit almost half as much particulate pollution into the air as the total amount released by cars, according to a new study. Ship pollutants affect both the Earth's climate and the health of people living along coastlines.

"Since more than 70 percent of shipping traffic takes place within 250 miles of the coastline, this is a significant health concern for coastal communities," says lead author Daniel Lack. He and his colleagues reported their findings on 25 February 2009 in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, a publication of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Read article here