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【正文】 they are built to float, not to be ripped apart, spilling toxins, oil and sludge into the surrounding seas. The men who work here are dwarfed by the ships they are destroying. And they dissect the ships by hand. The most sophisticated technology on the beach is a blowtorch. The men carry metal plates, each weighing more than a ton from the shoreline to waiting trucks, walking in step like pallbearers, or like members of a chain gang. They paint images of where they would like to be on the trucks pictures of paradise far from this wasteland. And when night falls, the work continues and the beach bees an inferno of smoke and flames and filth. This industry, which employs thousands and supplies Bangladesh with almost all its steel, began with an accident a cyclone to be precise. In 1965, a violent storm left a giant cargo ship beached on what was then a pristine coastline. It didn39。t take long before people began ripping the ship apart. They took everything and businessmen took note perhaps they didn39。t need a storm to bring ships onto this beach here. Mohammed Mohsin39。s family has bee extremely wealthy bringing ships onto these beaches. He pays millions of dollars for each ship and makes his profit from the steel he sells. The name of his pany is PHP, which stands for Peace, Happiness and Prosperity. His latest acquisition is a ship weighing in at 4,000 tons but Mohsin tells Simon that39。s small by parison to other vessels that have been gutted on the beaches. They have handled ships as large as 68,000 tons. This the first time Mohsin has seen the 4,000 ton ship close up. In fact buying a ship is not at all like buying a car. He didn39。t even need to see a picture before he bought it for $14 million. All he needed to know was its weight and how much the owners were charging for each ton of steel. One of the single most valuable parts of the ship is the propeller. The small ships propeller is worth around $35,000 alone, Mohsin estimates. It may be a small ship to Mohsin, but getting onto it from the beach is still a bit delicate. Mohsin39。s ships don39。t have seafaring captains anymore he is the captain now of dying ships and the captain of one of the largest of 30 shipyards on this 10mile stretch of beach. Some 100 ships are ripped apart on the beach each year, most of them from the west. It is the west39。s garbage dump, says Roland Buerk, who lives in Bangladesh. He spent a year in these yards, writing a book about the industry. 60 Minutes hired him to guide Simon through the tangled world of shipbreaking. To do the same work in America or England would be very expensive. It would be because in Europe and America when they do this, they do it in dry docks, Buerk explains. So in actual fact, the owners of these ships are selling them to the yard owners here to break up. If they had to do it in America, they39。d have to pay for that process to be carried out. So you see it makes real economic sense to do it here. So old, outdated ships that were previously a liability, are now an asset, Simon remarks. Exactly, Buerk agrees. And that39。s why they end up on these shores. They are the shores of the most densely populated nation and one of the poorest nations in the world. Bangladesh desperately needs steel for construction but has no iron ore mines. The shipbreaking yards are its mines, providing 80 percent of the nation39。s steel. But steel is only part of the deal。 there are so many things on a ship which are sold off. It is in fact a gigantic recycling operation. You can find everything, including kitchen sinks, at a sprawling roadside market which goes on for miles. When you39。re driving down this road, it39。s not a problem if you need a toilet or a life boat or a light bulb. It is estimated that 97 percent of the ship39。s contents are recycled. The other three percent, the stuff nobody would buy, including the hazardous waste, asbestos, arsenic and mercury, are left behind to foul the beaches. And what we39。re looking at, which is a recycling operation, is also an environmental disaster, Simon says. That39。s true. And I think this is really capitalism as red in tooth and claw as it gets. At the moment this is what makes financial sense for everybody. And this is, despite the fact that we might not like it, and it doesn39。t look pretty, this is how it39。s done, Buerk says. The workers toil in tough conditions. They have no unions, no safety equipment, and no training. About 50 are said to die in accidents each year。 often in explosions set off by blowtorches deep inside the fumefilled holds. You see casualties in the yards, men who were injured here but have no money to go anywhere else. The workers are housed in barracks with no beds, just steel plates scavenged from the ships they break. Many of the workers are not old enough to grow a beard. Some are, quite simply, children. 60 Minutes spoke to several who said they were 14 and had been working here for two years. So what does the man from Peace Happiness and Prosperity say about that? Asked if there are any children working in his yard, Mohsin says, Not my yard. Well, we talked to several children, Simon tells Mohsin. We found a couple who were 14 and said they39。d been working there for a couple of years. They are if they are working if they don39。t work, what they39。ll do, then? Our government cannot afford it. Their food, shelter and clothing has to be provided by someone whether their parents or the government. None of them can afford it. So what they gonna do? Mohsin argues. So, you say that child labor is inevitable, necessary in Bangladesh? Simon asks. If they don39。t work in shipbreaking yard, they39。ll work somewhere else. They have to, Mohsin replies. But child labor is only one of the issues. Environmentalists have been doing battle with the industry for years. They say the west has no business dumping its toxic waste on impoverished lands