The Maritime and Coastguard Agency is working with the Environment Agency to establish the source of the cloud, which left 150 people seeking medical treatment and caused the evacuation of Birling Gap beach in East Sussex. A satellite imaging agency may have located a possible source of the chemical plume to a boat close to the East Sussex shore. Two pollution monitoring sites on the south coast picked up a quadrupling in ozone levels in a 30-minute period on Sunday afternoon, suggesting the toxic cloud came from a nearby ship.
Timothy Baker, from King's College London's environmental research group, which manages the pollution monitoring network for Sussex local authorities, said these readings suggested the source was nearby and offshore because of the wind direction at the time. Similar levels of ozone pollution were reported during the 2003 heatwave, but at the time the levels did not rise so quickly, and no one reported stinging eyes, sore throats and vomiting as they did on Sunday. An Environment Agency spokesman said: "We are currently investigating any potential onshore sources of the pollution and to date we have not identified anything that could be attributed to the mist and we are liaising with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, who are doing similar investigations offshore." To think that this could all be—potentially—caused by a boat. I am curious how a single ship could have produced such an intense toxic haze among the coast of the UK. If the haze can cause vomiting and visible sickness to humans, I am worried about what it can do to ecosystems and species. Ships are often overlooked when talking about large machinery that produce a ton of gas emissions. This should most certainly not be the case. I am morbidly curious as to what the future holds for ocean liners; I wonder if they will become obsolete. Ozone levels skyrocketed, which can never be good. I believe it is time to force sticker regulations onto mass transport vehicles such as trains, planes, and ships. If we continue down the path we are currently on, our environmental demise is inevitable.
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