Ozone depletion: a silent health killer!
October 28th, 2009
Why are we advised to wear enough sun protection cream when we leave the house? Our ancestors never needed it and the survived well without any type of skin problems. They had a pollution free world with a fully intact ozone layer that ensured skin protection and good health for them all.
But these are dangerous times. We now live in a world that is racing to be as completely advanced as possible and in that race, important things are being compromised. The ozone layer is one such important physical necessity that is being actively destroyed as we are headed toward industrial advancement.
How does this work?
The ozone layer is one of the parts of the earth’s atmosphere. It is located in the stratosphere at a height of 30 miles above the earth. It acts like filter to prevent the strongest of sun rays from reaching the earth’s surface. Ozone, itself, is a bluish gas that is formed by combining three atoms of oxygen and it is considered a dangerous pollutant but in its particular position in the stratosphere; it acts like a protective blanket coddling the earth from dangerous sun rays. If parts of the ozone layer start to deplete, more and more of these dangerous sunrays that contain strong ultraviolet rays will reach the earth’s surface causing crop damage, skin damage and skin cancers and even eye damage.
How does the ozone layer get depleted?
Until only a few years ago, no one was really aware of the presence of the ozone layer let alone its slow depletion. Till the 1970s and the early 1980s most scientists were of the view that the concentration of gases in the atmosphere remained constant with check and balances automatically being regulated. But in the early 1980s, it became possible to track the amount of gases present in the atmosphere and their exact functions. Model calculations then showed that the amount of chlorine, bromine, methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (from carbon tetrachloride, methyl chloroform, and hydro chloro flouro carbons) was more and increasing exponentially due to pollution and industrialization. The discovery of a large hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica and the eventual melting effect on the Antarctic icecaps scared everyone into hyper drive. The primary concern was now to limit the spread of the hole and to control the factors that were causing such a depletion.
The overwhelmingly main cause of the depletion of ozone is the use of chlorofluorocarbons that are used in many industries all over the world. Chlorine present in the CFC combined with one of the three molecules of ozone destroying the chemical structure and function of ozone. Most developed nations used wide amounts of CFC for several different applications and they were not willing to cut back on the use of CFC’s for any reason! But late in the 1970s, research started mounting about the ill effects of CFC. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched a satellite that reinforced the conclusion and the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite also revealed the instability of CFCs that was destroying the Ozone layer. When research results started to mount, US, UK and Canada banned the use of CFCs to protect the environment but it was too little too late.
Current effects of the Ozone layer depletion
The ozone wound is not healing and it’s steadily spreading! Most scientists agree that the huge hole over the Antarctic is not bring cured or reducing in size irrespective of the cutbacks in pollutions and CFC use. Over the past decades, worldwide monitoring has definitely shown an increase in the size of the hole with an 5% jump in the amount of ultraviolet exposure in the northern hemisphere. There has also been a concomitant increase in the incidence of malignant skin cancer over the last 40 years. Scientists estimate that for each 1% decline in the ozone layers, humans will experience a 2-3% jump in skin cancer rates. Statistics begin to get scary!
