Word: cfc
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...move follows a national effort to stop theuse of foam products because they do not decomposeand because some foams contain chloroflourocarbons(CFC), a group of chemicals which erode the ozonelayer. Most foam cups do not contain CFC, but thechemicals are still used to produce industrialfoams. CFC is released during the manufacturingprocess and when foams are burned in municipalincinerators...
...precise chemical process is still uncertain, but the central role of CFCs is undeniable. Last month Barney Farmer, an atmospheric physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., announced that his ground-based observations as a member of the 1986 Antarctic National Ozone Expedition pointed directly to a CFC-ozone link. "The evidence isn't final," he said, "but it's strong enough." Earlier this month, results from NASA's Punta Arenas project confirmed the bad news. Not only was the ozone hole more severely depleted than ever before -- fully 50% of the gas had disappeared during the polar...
...make matters worse, a host of other gases are now known to add to the greenhouse effect. In 1975, Ramanathan was amazed to discover that Freon, a widely used CFC, was an infrared absorber. "It had a very large impact," he says. "Since then, tracking down the role of other trace gases has become a cottage industry. There are dozens of them, and they are rivaling the effects of increasing CO2." In fact, by the year 2030 the earth will already face the equivalent of a doubling of CO2, thanks to these other rapidly increasing gases, including methane, nitrous oxide...
Some experts do not believe the projected cutback is good enough. Says Rowland: "The Montreal agreement simply isn't sufficient to protect the ozone. We should have signed a treaty that reduced CFC production by 95% -- not 50%." Nonetheless, the Environmental Protection Agency has calculated that without the accord, a staggering 131 million additional cases of skin cancer would occur among people born before...
...Montreal negotiations, which capped nearly five years of talks, lasted nine days and involved some 150 scientists, environmentalists and industry representatives. The protocol allows developing countries to increase CFC use for ten years, in the interest of making more available to them items like refrigerators. It permits the Soviet Union, which plans its economy in five- year cycles, to go ahead with production scheduled through 1990. Thus the amount of the chemicals produced worldwide will actually grow by as much as 15% in the coming decade, cutting the real decrease by 1999 to just...