Work‑Related Migration to the Alang Ship‑Breaking Industry from Other Parts of India: An Overview of Health‑Related Issues

Our plain-English summary of Work‑Related Migration to the Alang Ship‑Breaking Industry from Other Parts of India: An Overview of Health‑Related Issues, by R. Singh, A.L. Frank (Annals of Global Health, 2025).

The study

• Authors: R. Singh, A.L. Frank
• Journal: Annals of Global Health
• Published: 2025;91(1):32
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher · Free full text

Abstract

Background: India has a ship‑breaking yard at Alang in Gujarat. The workers are prone to being exposed to various hazardous chemicals, including asbestos. These workers are often interstate migrants, and there is a chance of them developing diseases caused by asbestos, manifesting decades after exposure. This includes mesothelioma, which is a malignancy caused by asbestos exposure and can manifest much after the cessation of their employment. Objective: In the absence of an operational national database of migrants, it is important to understand the source of migrants to trace future disease occurrence, especially after retiring to their home states. This study aims to find the Indian districts from which workers migrate to work at Alang‑Sosiya ship‑breaking yards. Methods: The current study uses the Right to Information Act, 2005, to find out the districts of residents of migrant workers that came to Alang in 2019 as a representative year. Findings and conclusion: The data point to districts in three states: Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar, and have important policy consequences and epidemiological importance as these can be used to understand the aetiology of asbestos‑related diseases.

Copyright: © 2025 The Author(s).

In plain English

This study looked at where workers at the Alang-Sosiya ship-breaking yards in Bhavnagar district, Gujarat, India, came from. Ships dismantled there may contain asbestos. The authors were concerned that mesothelioma, which can appear decades later, may occur after workers return to their home states. The study did not examine any worker's health or measure exposure. Using India's Right to Information Act, 2005, the authors obtained from the Gujarat Maritime Board the home districts of the 1,896 people who took the compulsory basic 'Comprehensive Safety Training' in 2019. They used this count as a stand-in for people coming to work at the yards. Of these, 41.25% were from Bhavnagar district. A total of 37.9% came from three distant states: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand. The largest outside district was Chatra in Jharkhand (8.38%), followed by Deoria in Uttar Pradesh (5.64%). Smaller shares came from Odisha and West Bengal. The authors noted that the trainees included white-collar staff and that the data cover one year only. The authors concluded that the extent of mesothelioma should be studied in states with migration-based economies.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Descriptive count of trainees' home districts from Gujarat Maritime Board training records. No human participants, tissue or health data were involved.
• Who was studied: People who took the compulsory basic 'Comprehensive Safety Training' at the Alang-Sosiya ship-breaking yards, Gujarat, India, in 2019. The records were obtained from the Gujarat Maritime Board through a Right to Information Act request.
• Exposure: Work at ship-breaking yards that dismantle end-of-life ships, which may contain asbestos. No fiber type and no exposure measurement are reported in this study.
• Main results:
  • The number of people taking the compulsory training was used as a proxy for the number of workers coming to the yards.
  • Of 1,896 people trained in 2019, 41.25% were from Bhavnagar district, Gujarat, where the yards are located.
  • 37.9% of the 2019 trainees came from three states distant from Alang: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand.
  • Chatra district, Jharkhand, accounted for 8.38% of the 2019 trainees.
  • Deoria district, Uttar Pradesh, accounted for 5.64% of the 2019 trainees.
  • Some trainees came from districts in West Bengal and Odisha, but larger numbers came from the Purvanchal area.
  • Counting all training courses, 5,972 people were trained in 2019.
  • Counting all training courses from 2003 to October 2023, 156,709 people were trained.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that the extent of mesothelioma should be studied in states with migration-based economies, where workers may return home after working elsewhere.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The trainees included white-collar workers, so the count does not fully represent manual workers.
  • The data cover a single year (2019) and do not represent workers trained in earlier years who may still be working.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Mesothelioma, Shipyards and maritime work.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Mesothelioma, Asbestos Exposure.

Related studies

• Assessment of the future mesothelioma disease burden from past exposure to asbestos in ship recycling yards in India — R. Singh, J.W. Cherrie, et al. (2020)
• Parenchymal asbestosis due to primary asbestos exposure among ship-breaking workers: report of the first cases from Bangladesh — V. Muralidhar, M.F. Ahasan, et al. (2017)
• What to do about the asbestos currently in ships and industry? — G.W. Wright (1979)
• Historical state of knowledge of the health risks of asbestos posed to seamen on merchant ships — D.G. Dodge, B.D. Beck (2016)
• Asbestos-related disease in Bangladeshi ship breakers: a pilot study — M.N. Courtice, P.A. Demers, et al. (2011)
• Health experts concerned over India's asbestos industry — T. Burki (2010)

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