Word: aerosol
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...overdose of the sun's ultraviolet light. Their ominous findings: the vital blanket of gas is so fragile that it might well be severely damaged or destroyed by large-scale atmospheric nuclear tests, to say nothing of military and civilian supersonic aircraft, and even the widespread use of aerosol sprays...
Last week the vulnerability of the ozone layer was emphasized by two startling reports on the long-range effects of the propellant gases used in aerosol sprays. Writing in Science, University of Michigan Physicist Ralph Cicerone notes that spray-can gases, mostly chlorine compounds such as Freon, are highly stable under ordinary circumstances. Thus they are building up in the lower atmosphere and gradually rising toward the ozone layer. At that altitude, ultraviolet radiation breaks down Freon and the other chlorine-based gases, causing the release of chlorine atoms. They in turn react with ozone, converting it into ordinary oxygen...
Skin Cancer. Cicerone estimates that even if the use of aerosol sprays were halted immediately, the gases already in the atmosphere would cause a 10% reduction of ozone in the layer by 1990. That would result in a substantial increase of ultraviolet radiation on the earth, causing at the very least a greater incidence of skin cancer among humans. It might also disrupt the food chain by affecting food crops and plankton in the oceans. Lastly, the depletion of the ozone layer might have certain incalculable consequences like changing the earth's weather patterns...
...interviewed on the subject of "Public People, Private Lives" included such old friends as Mrs. Norman Vincent Peale, Dollie Cole and California Congressman Barry Goldwater Jr. The audience had its own all-in-the-family touch. Among those who came to cheer Julie on were Josephine Abplanalp, whose aerosol millionaire husband Robert is one of Richard Nixon's most loyal backers, and Mrs. Howard Ellis Cox, Sister Tricia's mother...
Unlucky Amateurs. Others unsuccessfully attempted to hide their hauls in the hollows of platform shoes, aerosol cans or bras. In June alone, Mexican police arrested 33 Americans for smuggling. Sentences are now running from 7 to 13½ years...