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The new generation of Ozone eaters
by Roger Harrabin |
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Scientists are warning that the ozone that protects people from skin cancer may be at risk from new chemicals being developed by industry.
The hole in the ozone layer is predicted to start healing soon, following international agreements to control 96 different ozone-depleting chemicals under the agreement known as the Montreal Protocol.
But a meeting of the protocol's members this week will hear that substitutes for the banned chemicals may gobble up ozone too - albeit not nearly so voraciously.
The new chemicals (like n-propyl bromide and chlorobromomethane) present decision-makers with a tricky dilemma.
They are short-lived compounds useful for industry, and in northern countries like the UK or the USA they react with other chemicals before they reach the ozone.
But in tropical countries they get sucked up by strong convective currents at the
equator to the stratosphere where they start to eat the ozone layer.
The pressure group Greenpeace say it'll be politically impossible for them to be allowed in the rich North, but banned in the developing South ... so they must be controlled world-wide.
Chemists say this is a waste of a useful chemical and call for another solution. So far no-one's quite sure what that might be.
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Ozone layer over Antarctica |
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Antarctic ice cap flow ozone layer region 3 |
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