![]() Accomplishments like these inspired former secretary-general of the United Nations Kofi Anan to state that the Montreal Protocol was “perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date”. Twenty years later, every United Nations (UN) member state had become a party to the Montreal Protocol, more than 99% of ODS production and consumption worldwide had been phased out, and the ozone layer was well on the way to recovery. Less than 2 months later, Joseph Farman and colleagues provided observational evidence of a stratospheric “ ozone hole” over the Antarctic potentially linked to rising CFC concentrations, which ultimately led to international agreement on the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, better known simply as the Montreal Protocol. The Montreal Protocol has taken on a second life in recent years as a de facto-and highly beneficial-climate treaty. Tolba, to persuade 25 countries and the European Union to sign the Vienna Convention on the Protection of the Ozone Layer in March 1985, setting the stage for international controls on ODSs. The scientific evidence was enough for the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, Mostafa K. Reports that CFCs also acted as greenhouse gases sparked scientific investigations looking into what substances besides carbon dioxide (CO 2) might destabilize the atmosphere and how the evolving cocktail of climate pollutants could be considered. ![]() The boycotts then expanded into government prohibitions of specified products. Warnings that ozone depletion from CFCs could increase the incidence of skin cancer sparked consumer boycotts of products made with and containing ODSs, such as aerosols and certain polystyrene foam food service containers. They also provided theoretical proof that ODSs chemically decompose in the stratosphere and catalytically deplete stratospheric ozone, and they quantified the adverse health, environmental, and economic effects of CFCs. In the ensuing decade after these initial alarms, scientists measured and documented the buildup and long lifetimes in the atmosphere of CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances (ODSs). The following year, atmospheric scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan further warned that CFCs and other chlorinated fluorocarbons are also powerful greenhouse gases. ![]() This layer protects Earth’s surface from harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation that, in excess, can cause skin cancer and cataracts, suppress the human immune system, damage agricultural crops and natural ecosystems, and deteriorate the built environment. ![]() Sherwood Rowland warned that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), compounds widely used at the time as refrigerants and aerosol propellants, could destroy the stratospheric ozone layer. ![]()
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