The Arctic Messenger - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 16

from the United Kingdom and from western continental Europe. Furthermore, their under-
lying geology is rich in acid rocks, which leaves their soils and lakes with little protect-
ive buffering capacity. In addition, several smelters in the eastern and central Arctic of the
formerSovietUnion,suchasintheKolaPeninsula atNikelandMonchegorskandbetween
the Yenisei River and the Taymyr Peninsula at Norilsk, had resulted in devastated land-
scapes of lifeless forests and lakes.
The acidification story is important in an Arctic context, even though the most signi-
ficant impacts (with the exception of those resulting from smelters located within the Arc-
tic) are found south of the Arctic. This is because it demonstrated how an activity in one
geographic region can - through the transport of pollutants in the atmosphere - lead to sig-
nificant environmental effects in a different and distant region. The international collabor-
ation that took place to address this problem also acted as a forerunner to several actions
taken later to address other pollution issues of universal importance to the Arctic.
A more insidious and invisible dimension to our story began in the 1980s, with con-
firmation that the so-called spring “stratospheric ozone hole” first observed in the Antarctic
now had an Arctic twin. It was not as strong as its southern sibling but had the potential to
expose larger populations of people to increased ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Ozone is pro-
duced naturally in the stratosphere, where it absorbs much of the incoming solar UV radi-
ation. This is of great biological significance because all wavelengths of UV radiation are
sufficiently energetic to cause disruption of molecular bonding. In 2011, the Internation-
al Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization classified the entire
UV spectrum as a Group 1 carcinogen. The stratospheric ozone layer is therefore vital to
protecting life on Earth's surface. The root cause for stratospheric ozone loss is the release
into the atmosphere of several families of chemicals known as ozone-depleting substances
that were formerly used, for example, in refrigeration, as pesticides and as aerosol propel-
lants. When ozone-depleting substances are released into the atmosphere, they are rapidly
dispersed and are very resistant to decomposition in the troposphere. However, when they
are exposed to solar UV radiation in the stratosphere, they break down. Their chlorine and
bromine atoms are released, which then attack the surrounding ozone molecules. Ozone-