Industrial solvent chemical could delay healing of ozone hole by up to 30 years

Washington

WHILE the famous Antarctic "ozone hole" is finally beginning to heal, 30 years after it was first discovered, scientists have just identified a new threat to its recovery. A study, just out Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, suggests that a common industrial chemical called dichloromethane - which has the power to destroy ozone - has doubled in the atmosphere over the last 10 years. And if its concentrations keep growing, scientists say, it could delay the Antarctic ozone layer's return to normalcy by up to 30 years.

"We've known that dichloromethane has been increasing in the atmosphere - however, there's not been a concerted effort to assess what the impact of those increases could be for the ozone layer, and in particular for ozone recovery," said the new study's lead author Ryan Hossaini, an atmospheric chemist and research fellow at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. The new paper is one of the first to investigate and conclude that the chemical could have a substantial influence on the hole's ability to heal.