Word: cfc
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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...
...Foam has been singled out as the culprit, butit isn't. The average life span of a landfill is10 years. If we got rid of all foam products, wewould only extend the life of a landfill by onemonth. The CFC resulting from foam products isonly one-one thousandth of 1 percent of thehazards to the ozone layer...
Whatever the exact effect of foam products,sources on both sides of the question agreed thatthere will be a dramatic shift to paper productsin the future. Even McDonald's has limited its useof foam products and has stopped using CFC toproduce its foam...
...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...