Word: halon
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...ordered production limits on chemicals that are depleting the ozone in the upper atmosphere. Decreased levels of ozone, scientists have warned, would allow more ultraviolet radiation to reach the earth's surface and increase the incidence of skin cancer and other diseases. Under the new ruling, U.S. producers of halon, an ingredient in fire-extinguishing foam, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which are widely used as coolants in refrigerators and air-conditioners, must halve their output within ten years. Nearly a dozen other countries, including Canada and Norway, have adopted similar measures...
...Pusey Library is also the world's first to be designed with a built-in, fully-automated, halon-gas fire-extinguishing system...
Activated by a special "Pyr-a-larm," halon gas pours out of sinister-looking outlets in the ceiling and puts out fires instantly...
...beauty of halon gas," Robert R. Walsh '65, assistant University librarian for building planning, said yesterday, is that it doesn't damage the books, as water would, and it doesn't suffocate people, like the carbon dioxide in Yale's Beinecke rare books library...
...Halon reacts with the molecular process of combustion and makes it absolutely impossible for that process to continue," Walsh explained...