Every Day Is Special: September 16 – International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer

September 16 – International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer

Posted on September 16, 2017

Do you know about the ozone layer?

This thin layer of gas protects our planet - well, let's face it, what I really mean to say is that it protects the living things on our planet - from the harmful parts of the Sun's radiation.

The Sun makes all of life on Earth possible - we count on it for
light and warmth and for the crucial starting energy of most food chains.

But the Sun also pours out more energetic forms of radiation that are
harmful to life. Ultraviolet radiation (UVR) causes sunburns and skin cancer,
and it is the ozone layer that generally protects us from the brunt of UVR.

In other words, the ozone layer protects people from speedy sunburns and elevated rates of skin cancer - but it also protects humans and indeed all of life!!! - from dying out!

It's been 30 years since the Montreal Protocol, an agreement made by 193 countries to outlaw certain human-made chemicals that were destroying the ozone layer. These chemicals, CFCs, were commonly used in aerosol spray cans.

When some scientists first pointed out the dangers of CFCs, some people pooh-poohed them. They thought it was more important to keep our spray cans than to think about some far-off danger that they weren't sure even existed.

Luckily, scientists kept working on the theory of the CFC danger, and by 1976, the U.S. National Academy of Science concluded that CFCs and other human-made chemicals posed a credible threat. A few countries, including the U.S., moved to ban CFCs in aerosol cans. By 1985, a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica was discovered. And just two years later, nations met to discuss a larger, hopefully worldwide CFC ban - the Montreal Protocol I mentioned above.

The ban went into effect in 1989, and ozone levels stabilized in the mid-1990s and began to increase again in the 2000s. Recovery is hopefully going to continue, and scientists hope that even the Antarctic hole is going to close up by 2075.

Because of this success, some people call the Montreal Protocol the most successful international environmental agreement so far.