Date | Sept 16, 2016:
Environment Ministry celebrated the International Ozone Day yesterday on September 16 for preserving the depleting Ozone layer which protects us from harmful ultraviolet rays coming from the Sun. The Ozone Cell department organised contests in which school children participated for painting, writing slogans and making posters. Winners were awarded prizes.
The Ozone layer is a layer of Ozone molecules, that covers the earth’s stratosphere and resists the harmful UV (Ultraviolet) radiations by the sun and thus protects the earth. These UV radiations cause acute and irreversible effects to human body. The effects include mainly sunburn (or erythema) and tanning (or pigment darkening). The chronic effects of UV exposure can be much more serious, even life threatening, and include premature aging of the skin, suppression of the immune system, damage to the eyes, and skin cancer.
Book named ‘The Montreal Protocol: India’s Success Story’ was released by the Forest and Climate Change department of Environment Ministry on the occasion of Internation Ozone Day. The report contains how far India has reached in controlling the substances that deplete the protective Ozone layer. For example, Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in refrigerators was major contributor to the deteriorating health of Ozone layer, but CFCs levels have decreased severely in past few years.
Instead, CFC is now being replaced by HFC (Hydrofluorocarbon) which is Ozone friendly and government aims to completely replace HCFC (an alternative of CFCs) with HFCs by 2025, said Ajay Mathur, Director-General, TERI (The Energy and Research Institute), who was present at the event as a chief guest.
Mathur further added that although HFCs are Ozone friendly and aids in protecting us from ultraviolet rays but they have some other adverse effects. HFCs lead to warming of planet triggering global warming. Global Warming has become one of the biggest problems for the world and all the nations are putting efforts to curb the increasing temperature. Global warming has increased the average temperature leading to climate change and unpredictable weather due to which floods and droughts are becoming more common affecting the agriculture sector.
The effects of CFCs were first observed in 1980s when scientists observed a large hole in the Ozone above Antarctica. This is after which CFCs were banned in the whole world in 1987 under the Montreal Protocol by the United Nations and HFCs came into use.
Compounds like CCFs, HCFC and HFCs are very good coolant thus, they are used in refrigerators, AC, and solvents where cooling is required. But when released in the environment, it goes into the atmosphere and reacts with Ozone molecule (Ozone molecule is made of three atoms of Oxygen) which results in disintegration of Ozone molecule into Oxygen molecule (made up of two oxygen atoms) and one free Oxygen radicle.
However, a study by NASA suggests that HFCs too contributes to depletion of Ozone layer to some extent. Though not on large scale but in a significant amount. The study states that by the year 2050, the HFCs used in the above-mentioned cooling devices will have caused a total of 0.035 percentage of depletion on the Ozone layer.
(Source: http://tecake.in/)