Monday, February 28, 2011

Ozone Depletion


Last week I did some research on an important topic, Ozone Hole. What brought me to this topic was looking at current news about finding blisters on three different species of whales caused by sun. When I looked into the reason of ozone hole I realized the main reason is CFCs which are used in sprays,refrigerators,Air conditionors and etc. Ozone is made of three Oxygen molecules (O3), when UV light hits ozone it breaks it to two oxygen and an oxygen (O2 and O) and that single oxygen molecule would react with another O2 and make O3 and the cycle repeats. But once CFC enters the ozone the UV light breaks CFC3 to two CFCS and one chlorine(Cl), then chlorine reacts with oxygen (O) and makes Chlorine monoxide (ClO) therefore instead of O3 we end up having O2 and ClO in the stratosphere. That is when Ozone hole happens, UV light goes through the stratosphere layer but there are not enough ozone left in that layer to filter harmful rays of sun light out. Ozone depletion could bring severe damages for humans and animals both. There are few countries in the world that have banned using CFC in any product but even if one country does not apply regulations on use of CFC ozone depletion could happen and hurt all of us!

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