Two Americans and a Dutch scientist win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their research showing that the release of nitrogen oxide through man-made chlorofluorocarbons damages Earth’s natural ozone layer.
The groundwork for the Nobel was laid by Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, who released a landmark 1970 study of the effects of nitrogen oxides on the accelerated decomposition of the ozone layer.
Four years later, professors Mario Molina of MIT and F. Sherwood Rowland of the University of California at Irvine followed up with their own study, published in Nature. It described the threat to the ozone layer from chlorofluorocarbon gases (CFCs), or Freons, being released into the atmosphere through their use in plastics and aerosol sprays and as refrigerator coolants. The hard science led to legislation limiting CFC release into the atmosphere.
The erosion of the ozone layer is not only a contributing factor to global warming but a threat to life itself: without the ozone layer to absorb most of the sun’s ultraviolet rays, life as we know it is not possible. Besides the danger to humans of sunburn, skin cancer, and eye damage, ozone loss also threatens livestock—less sensitive than humans to UV, but outdoors longer. And UV damages the DNA of marine plankton, which could lead to die-offs and local or regional food-chain collapses that destroy the ocean fisheries for human use.
The Antarctic ozone hole extended so far north in 2000 that health officials in Punta Arenas, Chile, started warning residents not to go out in the midday sun. The problems are also severe in neighboring Argentina and in New Zealand and Australia—which have the highest skin-cancer rates in the world.—TL