The archive / Health and environment
1974–1987 · Worldwide
Spray cans are destroying the ozone layer!
The ozone hole
Panic meter
The verdict
Scientists warned that CFCs were breaking down the ozone layer. They were right, the world banned them – and the ozone layer is healing.
Reality meter
What was said?
In 1974 the chemists Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland showed that CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) from aerosol cans and refrigerators could break down the ozone layer, which protects us from UV radiation. Industry brushed the warning aside. In 1985 British scientists discovered a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica.
The verdict: what happened next?
The Montreal Protocol of 1987 phased out CFCs, and Molina and Rowland were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995. The ozone layer is now recovering and is expected to have fully healed by the middle of the century.
One of the few cases where the alarm was justified, the world acted and the problem shrank. It looks like an overreaction precisely because it worked.
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