Every 1% ozone depletion results in at least 2% increase in the amount of UV-B radiation reaching the earth. Higher levels of UV-B radiation increase the risk of severe damage to human health, e.g. eye diseases, skin cancer, immune system suppression. Increased dosages of UV-B also endanger crops, forests, plants, marine life and wildlife. Scientists predict the ozone crisis will be with us for many decades to come, and the greatest levels of ozone depletions will occur around the turn of the century.

Major chemical companies like Du Pont, ICI and Elf Atochem, have made billions of dollars in profit from the sale of ozone destroying chemicals around the world. Even when it became evident 20 years ago that CFCs were harming the ozone layer, the chemical companies continued to vigorously market their dangerous products.

When the international community finally moved to control the production of CFCs and HCFCs through the Montreal Protocol, the chemical industry took it as a challenge to develop new products to maintain its lucrative worldwide monopoly.

Today, the industry is promoting hydrofluorocarbons(HFCs) as replacements for CFCs and HCFCs. HFCs pose no direct threat to the ozone layer, but are very powerful global warming gases. They also have other negative environmental impacts.

Clearly, HFCs can not be the solution to ozone depletion. They merely replace the ozone crisis with yet another environmental disaster.

Products utilizing safer alternatives for virtually every application of CFCs and HCFCs exist. For example, in refrigeration and air conditioning, these products use natural refrigerants, such as hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide, air, water and ammonia. Despite the political and economic machinations of the chemical companies, environmentally safer substances and technologies are finding their way into the marketplace.

Dr. Joe Farman , the British scientist who discovered the ozone hole over Antarctica ten years ago, likened the chemical industry's haste to replace CFCs with HFCs and HCFCs as "out of the frying pan, into the fire". **

HFCs are environmentally destructive chemicals and are therefore obsolete. They are a poor investment for both industrialized and developing countries, and most certainly for the planet.

Isn't it time they were banned ?

** Farman, Joe "Replacing CFCs with HFCs and HCFCs: Out of the FRying Pan, Into the Fire" 1992 [Return]