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safety of domestic and industrial refrigeration.
Freon is actually a brand name for a series of
chlorofluorocarbons (hereafter CFCs), whose
stable, non-flammable qualities made them ideally
suited to the refrigeration industry. The problem
is that CFCs are so stable that they only tend to
break down in the upper reaches of the Earth's
atmosphere, at which point they produce chemical
reactions that erode the planet's protective layer of
ozone. The Earth's ozone layer serves to protect the
planet's surface from the most harmful forms of
ultraviolet radiation that come from the sun. The
industrial use of CFCs only really began to accel-
erate after World War II, and by the 1970s it has
been estimated that some 750,000 tons of the
compounds were being emitted into the global
atmosphere every year (McNeill, 2000: 113). These
levels of CFC production led to two observed
impacts on the planet's ozone layer: 1) a steady
decline of concentrations of ozone throughout the
world; and 2) a more marked seasonal decrease in
ozone coverage in the polar regions (the so-called
ozone hole) (Schiermeier, 2009) (see
Plate 3.1)
.
The loss of ozone in the Earth's atmosphere has
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