fumigants
Thirty years after Montreal pact, solving the ozone problem remains elusive.
Did the Montreal Protocol fix the ozone hole? It seemed so. With chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-eating chemicals banned, many scientists said it was only a matter of time before the ozone layer recharged, and the annual hole over Antarctica healed for good.
ANALYSIS
Thirty Years After Montreal Pact, Solving the Ozone Problem Remains Elusive
Despite a ban on chemicals like chlorofluorocarbons, the ozone hole over Antarctica remains nearly as large as it did when the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987. Scientists now warn of new threats to the ozone layer, including widespread use of ozone-eating chemicals not covered by the treaty.
BY FRED PEARCE • AUGUST 14, 2017
Did the Montreal Protocol fix the ozone hole? It seemed so. With chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-eating chemicals banned, many scientists said it was only a matter of time before the ozone layer recharged, and the annual hole over Antarctica healed for good.
But 30 years on, some atmospheric chemists are not so sure. The healing is proving painfully slow. And new discoveries about chemicals not covered by the protocol are raising fears that full recovery could be postponed into the 22nd century – or possibly even prevented altogether.
In mid-September, the United Nations is celebrating the protocol’s 30th anniversary. It will declare that “we are all ozone heroes.” But are we patting ourselves on the back a bit too soon?
The ozone layer is a long-standing natural feature of the stratosphere, the part of the atmosphere that begins about six miles above the earth. The ozone layer filters out dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the sun that can cause skin cancer and damage many life forms. It may have been essential for the development of life on Earth.
So there was alarm in the 1970s when researchers first warned that extremely stable man-made compounds like CFCs, used in refrigerants and aerosols, were floating up into the stratosphere, where they released chlorine and bromine atoms that break down ozone molecules. In the 1980s, Antarctic researchers discovered that these chemical reactions went into overdrive in the super-cold polar stratospheric clouds that formed over the frozen continent. They had begun creating a dramatic “hole” in the ozone layer at the end of each austral winter.
The ensuing panic resulted in the signing of the Montreal Protocol on September 16, 1987. It and its successors have phased out production of a range of man-made chlorine and bromine compounds thought to persist for the several years needed for them to reach the stratosphere. Besides CFCs, they include carbon tetrachloride, hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), and methyl bromide, a fumigant once widely used to kill pests.
So far so good. The amount of ozone-depleters in the atmosphere has dropped by more than 10 percent since peaking in the late 1990s. In response, the total ozone in the atmosphere has been largely unchanged since 2000.
Satellite imagery depicting the annual maximum extent of the ozone hole over Antarctica from 1979 to 2013. Credit: NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER
But in the past five years, evidence has emerged that potential ozone-eating compounds can reach the ozone layer much faster than previously thought. Under some weather conditions, just a few days may be enough. And that means a wide range of much more short-lived compounds threaten the ozone layer – chemicals not covered by the Montreal Protocol.
These compounds are all around us. They are widely used as industrial solvents for tasks like degreasing and dry cleaning. And their releases into the atmosphere are increasing fast.
These new ozone-busters include dichloromethane (DCM), a common and cheap paint stripper, also used in foam-blowing agents and, ironically, in the manufacture of “ozone-friendly” alternatives to CFCs. With emissions now exceeding one million tons a year, the concentration of DCM in the lower atmosphere has more than doubled since 2004. Even so, it has not been regarded as a threat to the ozone layer, because its typical lifetime in the atmosphere before it is broken down in photochemical reactions is only about five months. It should, atmospheric chemists concluded, remain safely in the lower atmosphere.
But that view collapsed in 2015, when Emma Leedham Elvidge at the University of East Anglia in England examined air samples taken on board commercial aircraft cruising at the lower edge of the stratosphere. She found high levels of DCM, especially over the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, and particularly during the Asian monsoon season, when strong updrafts fast-track air from the ground to the stratosphere. It seems they were taking DCM along for the ride.
Alarm bells are ringing about dozens of other short-lived ozone-destroying chlorine compounds accumulating in the atmosphere.
How much should we worry? Ryan Hossaini, an atmospheric chemist at Lancaster University, recently did the math. He calculated that DCM currently contributes less than 10 percent of the chlorine in the ozone layer. But on current emission trends, it could be That could delay the ozone hole’s recovery by 30 years, until at least 2095, he suggested.
Others share that concern. “Growing quantities of DCM are leaking into the stratosphere, where it is exceptionally effective in destroying the ozone,” says David Rowley, an atmospheric chemist at the University College London, who was not involved in the research. “The potential for DCM to affect the global ozone budget is profound.”
Alarm bells are ringing about dozens of other short-lived, potentially ozone-destroying chlorine compounds accumulating in the atmosphere as a result of fast-rising global manufacturing. They include 1,2-dichloroethane, a chemical widely used in the manufacture of PVC pipes. There are few atmospheric measurements of this compound yet, “but sporadic data suggest it is a significant source of chlorine in the atmosphere,” says Hossaini.
The risks of such chemicals reaching the ozone layer are greatest in the tropics, where manufacturing is booming in fast-industrialising countries such as China and India, and where, as luck would have it, atmospheric circulation patterns are favorable. The Asian monsoon can propel the gases to the stratosphere in as little as ten days, according to unpublished research seen by Yale Environment 360.
The movement of ozone-depleting chemicals through the atmosphere, shifting from the tropics and concentrating in Antarctica. NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER
Thirty years on, the Montreal Protocol has not begun to come to grips with these chemicals, warns Rowley. “The naïve view until recently,” he says, “was that short-lived [chemicals] didn’t present a threat to stratospheric ozone. Wrong.”
Other loopholes in the protocol are concerning researchers as well. In 2014, colleagues of Leedham Elvidge’s at the University of East Anglia warned that three CFCs supposedly banned under the protocol were turning up in increasing amounts in the clean air blowing round the Southern Ocean and captured at Cape Grim in Tasmania. Johannes Laube, an atmospheric chemist at the University of East Anglia, calculated that global emissions of CFC-113a, once an important feedstock in manufacturing both refrigerants and pyrethroid pesticides, doubled in two years.
How come? It turns out that the Montreal Protocol never completely banned CFCs. “CFC-113a is covered by a loophole that allows industries to apply for exemptions,” Laube says. Confidentiality clauses in the treaty about these exemptions mean that “we simply don’t know if we have found exempted emissions, or if they are from some illegal manufacture somewhere. Either way, they are increasing fast, which makes this worrying.” Trade in banned ozone-depleting chemicals has declined in the past decade, but remains a problem, and has been documented particularly for hydrochlorofluorocarbons.
Scientists knew recovery of the ozone layer would take time because of the long lifetimes of many of the dangerous compounds we unleashed in past decades. But last year, Susan Solomon of MIT – who back in the 1980s became one of the world’s most celebrated scientists for uncovering the chemistry of the polar stratospheric clouds — declared that she had detected the first “fingerprints” of the hole closing. “The onset of healing of Antarctic ozone loss has now emerged,” she wrote.
“The signature of ozone recovery is not quite there yet,” says one expert.
But other researchers remain cautious. There have been some recent bumper springtime holes in Antarctic ozone. The 2015 hole was the fourth largest since 1991, peaking at an area larger than the continent of North America. It was also deeper than other recent holes and lasted longer. 2016 was also worse than average and 2017 is expected to be severe, too.
Solomon blamed 2015 on the Calbuco volcano in Chile, which ejected sulphur particles that enhanced the ozone-destroying properties of polar stratospheric clouds. But Susan Strahan of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center warns that the size of the hole in any given year is still dominated by year-to-year variations in the temperature of the stratosphere and the vagaries of meteorology. “The signature of ozone recovery is not quite there yet,” she says, adding that day will come, but we may have to wait until the 2030s.
Meanwhile at the other end of the planet, ozone losses over the Arctic may still be worsening. The Arctic is less susceptible to the formation of ozone holes than Antarctica, because the weather is messier. The stable air that causes the ultra-cold conditions where polar stratospheric clouds form in Antarctica is much less likely. But it does happen whenever temperatures get cold enough for polar stratospheric clouds to form.
A deep hole briefly formed over the Arctic in 2011. In places, more than 80 percent of the ozone was destroyed, twice the loss in the worst previous years, 1996 and 2005. In both the past two winters, researchers saw polar stratospheric clouds over parts of Britain, says Jonathan Shanklin of the British Antarctic Survey. But they were brief and did not lead to major ozone loss.
Shanklin says an important reason for the sluggish recovery of the ozone layer is global warming. As increased levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide trap more solar heat radiating from the Earth’s surface, less warmth reaches the stratosphere, which cools as a result. This trend has been evident for almost 40 years. A colder stratosphere improves conditions for ozone loss. Climate change “could delay the recovery of the ozone hole well into the second half of this century,” he says.
Protecting the ozone layer “presents a much greater industrial and political challenge than previously thought,” says one researcher.
Should we be frightened? Some of the crazier hype in the early days of the ozone hole – like blind sheep in Patagonia and collapsing marine ecosystems – proved nonsense. But the raised risk of skin cancers from the extra ultraviolet radiation streaming through the thinned ozone layer is real enough – particularly for reckless white-skinned sunbathers. The ozone layer is still as thin as it was 30 years ago.
The good news is that without the Montreal Protocol things would have been a great deal worse, says Martyn Chipperfield, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Leeds. The Antarctic hole would be 40 percent bigger than it is; the ozone layer over Europe and North America would be 10 percent thinner; the 2011 Arctic hole would have been Antarctic-sized; and we would be looking at about two million more cases of skin cancers by 2030, according to research conducted by Chipperfield and colleagues.
Even so, the idea that the Montreal Protocol is doing its job and the recovery is under way begins to look complacent. If emissions of uncontrolled ozone-depleting chemicals such as DCM continue rising, then the gains could be lost. The answer is obvious. “We should be looking into controlling DCM and other solvents, much in the same way as we did CFCs,” says Leedham Elvidge.
The World Meteorological Organization and other UN agencies overseeing the protocol acknowledge that DCM and other short-lived ozone depleting substances “are an emerging issue for stratospheric ozone,” but the government signatories have yet to take action to limit their emissions.
That would involve getting rid of a far wider range of chemicals than so far done under the protocol. Protecting the ozone layer “presents a much greater industrial and political challenge than previously thought,” says Rowley. Thirty years on, there is evidently still a lot to do.
Fred Pearce is a freelance author and journalist based in the U.K. He is a contributing writer for Yale Environment 360 and is the author of numerous books, including "The Land Grabbers, Earth Then and Now: Potent Visual Evidence of Our Changing World," and "The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth About Global Warming." MORE ABOUT FRED PEARCE →
TOPICS
Climate
PUBLIC HEALTH
POLLUTION
ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
REGIONS
Antarctica and the Arctic
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California’s clean-water-for-all experiment begins to deliver.
The state was the first in the U.S. to declare a human right to water.
By Brett Walton, Circle of Blue
Hundreds of thousands of California residents, perhaps as many as one million of the 39 million people in the state, do not have safe drinking water or toilet facilities. The wide gap in access to a basic need became a rallying cry more than a decade ago when social justice advocates began promoting a new water strategy for California, a strategy that resulted, in 2012, in a first-of-its-kind state statute that declared safe, clean, affordable water and sanitation a human right.
Lawmakers encounter those principles today as they debate how to fund water system maintenance for poor communities and design the nation’s first state-run water utility bill assistance program.
The right-to-water movement took time to accumulate allies. It persevered through skepticism and a governor’s veto. But then on September 25, 2012, Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 685, which stated that “every human being has the right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes.” The law also asked, but did not require, state agencies to consider that policy in their work. California, a leader in so many environmental laws, was the first state to enact such legislation.
Five years later, what has the law amounted to? Quite a lot, especially during the state’s recent deep drought, which gave the law’s goals a boost. Far from being the symbolic gesture that some assumed it would be, the law has resulted in significant adjustments to state policy and practice.
“There’s been a sea change in how the state thinks about water — which is saying something in a state in which water is highly politicized and low-income communities are on the short end of the stick for access,” said Britton Schwartz, a fellow at the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley and a long-time advocate for the human right to water.
Circle of Blue interviewed 18 people who have played a role in passing the human right to water legislation and implementing it: lawmakers who introduced bills to extend water access, organizers who built coalitions in support of the law, utility trade groups, people from communities with dirty water, and state officials who are turning the words of the law into actions.
In these conversations, a consensus evaluation emerged. First, the law has, without a doubt, resulted in substantial changes to state water policy. Responsibility for drinking water is now consolidated in a single agency, the State Water Resources Control Board, which, thanks to new legal authority, has added programs and tools for assessing water needs and responding to them. Voter-approved bonds and state budgets have freed up hundreds of millions of dollars for water projects in poor communities. The management process is more inclusive, too. More people have a voice in water decisions, and state regulators and water managers are paying closer attention to the needs of communities on the margin.
“What the law does is more important than mandating water deliveries. It democratizes the decision-making process,” said Mike Eng, a former Assembly member and the sponsor of AB 685. “That’s the enduring worth of the human right to water.”
Second, there is still much work to do. If policy changes and more democratic management have set the playing field, the game itself is just beginning. Sustainable drinking water solutions have been achieved for only a few of the hundreds of thousands in need, and sanitation has largely been ignored. Some of the legal powers the state acquired, including a law requiring stricter oversight of groundwater, a flashpoint for water access in the recent drought, are still too young to have had an effect. There will be tough financial choices ahead for a state that is also prioritizing investments in flood control, dam repairs, water recycling, and water storage.
“The statute is only just now starting to unspool in a way that might affect change,” asserted Mike Antos, senior watershed manager at the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority.
The third consensus view is that the main obstacles to the clean-water-for-all goal are money and preventing rivers and aquifers from being polluted in the first place. Who pays? and How much? are questions of the day in the Legislature, which is debating a bill to fund the operation and maintenance of water systems in poor communities. Funding will also be a point of contention for the state-run water affordability program, which the State Water Board will present to the Legislature by February.
It was a radical idea once, the human right to water. Over the years, the idea has gained slow acceptance in California. In the beginning, though, it did not always seem that such progress would be made.
A History of Neglect
The Salinas Valley, extending inland like a splinter from the central California coast, is an agricultural dynamo, often called America’s salad bowl. It produces more than half of the nation’s broccoli and lettuce along with dozens of other crops. It’s also a region rich in the history of two related social movements — the struggle for farmworker justice and the human right to safe water.
Horacio Amezquita, since he was a teenager, has lived through both. The valley’s farmworker community, mostly immigrants to the land of plenty, had little power and less money when they sought permanent housing after being evicted from a Salinas Valley worker’s camp in the early 1970s following a labor strike.
Kicked out of La Posada trailer park in Salinas, some of the workers fixed their sights on an abandoned camp south of the city set amid the fields in which they toiled. It was a long campaign. Years of negotiating land rights, acquiring the land, fending off opposition from schools and growers, and securing federal development loans culminated in 1979 with the construction of San Jerardo Cooperative, where Amezquita lived for 34 years and is now the general manager.
With 60 homes and four rental units, San Jerardo was the first housing cooperative in California organized by farmworkers, and it laid a legal foundation for five other cooperatives in Monterey County.
Then came the fight for clean water. Not that many years after the homes were built the community’s wells started to turn sour for the roughly 250 residents of San Jerardo. Chemicals and nutrients applied to fields of strawberries and grapes, broccoli and lettuce, cauliflower and cabbage to kill insects and make the berries grow fat had moved downward into groundwater.
In 1990, San Jerardo’s first well tested above state standards for nitrate, a byproduct of plant vitamins that is suffocating for infants. The water also contained 1,2,3-TCP, a fumigant and pesticide. Three years later a second well was spoiled. The third and final well was condemned in 2001, and the residents of San Jerardo started to use bottled water for drinking and cooking.
Poor and cut off from traditional networks of political power, San Jerardo and communities like it dot the map of California. With the human right to water, they sought a voice that had been denied for so long.
If At First You Don’t Succeed…
In the last days of February 2009, an unusual bill appeared in the California Assembly. AB 1242 ordered state agencies “to employ all reasonable means” to secure “clean, affordable, and accessible water” for all human beings. Though Massachusetts and Pennsylvania had clean water clauses in their constitutions, no state had passed a right-to-water law with a scope as wide as what AB 1242 proposed.
Supporters knew that they faced a difficult path, and they were proved correct. Though it cleared the Legislature, the bill did not earn the governor’s endorsement.
On October 12, 2009, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed AB 1242. Schwarzenegger “wholeheartedly” supported the bill’s premise, but signing it into law, he argued, would result in lawsuits rather than water access.
“We should be doing everything we can to ensure that our communities have access to clean, affordable water for our citizens,” Schwarzenegger wrote in his veto message. “But the language of this bill will undoubtedly lead to potentially costly and constant litigation. This moves our limited state resources away from the day to day operations of achieving our clean water goals and puts them in the courtroom.”
Schwarzenegger instead signed two bills that directed state and federal money to poor communities. “Our most pressing barrier in achieving this goal is not desire, it is funding,” he wrote, presaging an argument that continues to this day.
Try, Try Again
Supporters of the bill were not deterred by the failure. In other arenas, in fact, they were making progress. After years of debate, the United Nations General Assembly, on July 28, 2010, passed a resolution that recognized the human right to water. It was a landmark accomplishment for human rights campaigners.
Advocates in California used the UN action to their advantage. They invited the UN’s appointed expert on water and sanitation to witness the state’s shortcomings.
In February and March of 2011, Catarina de Albuquerque, the UN expert, came to the United States to investigate water and sanitation access for the poor and marginalized. In California, she toured Seville, a town in the San Joaquin Valley with groundwater polluted by nitrate. She met with leaders of the Winnemen Wintu tribe, who worried about the destruction of traditional fishing sites and cultural grounds. She visited a homeless camp in Sacramento in which a self-appointed “sanitation technician” hauled the camp’s human waste — between 130 pounds and 230 pounds per week — on his bicycle to a public restroom where he flushed the mess down the toilet.
“It was a real eye-opener for a lot of people at all levels that there is a problem equivalent to what’s going on in third-world countries,” recalled Maria Herrera, then working at the Community Water Center and now at Self-Help Enterprises, a community development organization in the San Joaquin Valley.
That same winter, in February, the human right to water bill was revived in the California Assembly by Mike Eng, a former member of the Monterey Park City Council.
Like the residents of San Jerardo, Eng lived in a community with a contaminated groundwater supply. Perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket fuel, tainted two of Monterey Park’s 11 wells. Arsenic was found in concentrations above state standards in six wells.
A deep but relatively narrow coalition led the campaign. There were social justice groups with an environmental focus such as the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, Community Water Center, Food and Water Watch, and Clean Water Action. Environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club took part, too. The Winnemem Wintu tribe was a sponsor. There were also religious groups such as the Unitarian Universalist Services Committee, which was active in the campaign to get the UN to recognize a right to water, and the Catholic Charities Diocese of Stockton.
Britton Schwartz, who worked for the Community Water Center at that point, was one of the organizers on the frontlines and helped to educate elected officials and bureaucrats about the goals of the bill. In 2008 and 2009, she attended county Board of Supervisors meetings, regional water planning meetings, Department of Public Health meetings — any meeting in which water was being discussed. The message, unfamiliar to many in those rooms, that clean drinking water was a legal right turned heads.
“People were looking at me like an alien,” Schwartz recalled.
Campaigners took their message directly to lawmakers, organizing rallies on the Capitol steps. In a parody of the wine industry, they handed out bottles of Central Valley Special Blend, water that was contaminated with arsenic, uranium, bacteria, nitrate, 1,2,3 TCP, and other chemicals. “DO NOT DRINK,” the label read. “100% Community Tap Water.”
De Albuquerque, the UN expert, returned to the state to speak in favor of the bill, which was opposed by large water utilities and farm groups.
Amezquita remembers driving three or four hours to Sacramento to lobby lawmakers. “A lot of organizing took place to fight for the human right to water,” he said.
The law’s passage was also a result of the maturation of the environmental movement in California, a “coming of age,” in the words of Colin Bailey, now the executive director of the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water. By 2012, people who started as organizers had moved into positions of power, he said.
Martha Guzman Aceves, for instance. Formerly a legislative coordinator for United Farm Workers and a co-founder of the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, Guzman Aceves was named Gov. Brown’s deputy legislative affairs secretary in 2011. She was responsible for environmental and natural resources bills and the human right to water law was in her portfolio.
The bill supporters made a strategic move, Guzman Aceves said, when they changed the language of AB 685 to remove any hint of legal obligation on the part of the state or utilities. That modification sidestepped the core question and rallying point for opposition to the human right to water, which is how do you deliver?
“For someone to say you have a right to water means that someone else is required to give it,” said Doug LaMalfa, then a state senator and now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, during the floor debate in the Senate. LaMalfa voted no.
Unlike the attempt three years earlier, Eng and supporters took a different tack. Instead of mandating any specific action on the part of utilities or state agencies, the bill advanced a “moral policy statement,” explained Guzman Aceves, who now holds a seat on the California Public Utilities Commission.
“Once we have a common baseline, we can build off it,” she said. “And that’s what happened.”
The amended language was enough to push the bill across the finish line. Gov. Brown signed the bill into law on September 25, 2012.
It was a euphoric moment for the campaigners. But they were also aware of the challenges still to come.
“Today we’re celebrating this great victory, but tomorrow means implementation,” said Susana De Anda, co-founder of the Community Water Center, in October 2012. “Tomorrow means really ensuring that safe drinking water comes out of people’s taps. We recognize that justice might take a long time but we’re committed to the end.”
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Thirty years after the Montreal Protocol, solving the ozone problem remains elusive.
Scientists warn of new threats to the ozone layer, including widespread use of ozone-eating chemicals not covered by the treaty.
Despite a ban on chemicals like chlorofluorocarbons, the ozone hole over Antarctica remains nearly as large as it did when the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987. Scientists now warn of new threats to the ozone layer, including widespread use of ozone-eating chemicals not covered by the treaty.
BY FRED PEARCE • AUGUST 14, 2017
Did the Montreal Protocol fix the ozone hole? It seemed so. With chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-eating chemicals banned, many scientists said it was only a matter of time before the ozone layer recharged, and the annual hole over Antarctica healed for good.
But 30 years on, some atmospheric chemists are not so sure. The healing is proving painfully slow. And new discoveries about chemicals not covered by the protocol are raising fears that full recovery could be postponed into the 22nd century – or possibly even prevented altogether.
In mid-September, the United Nations is celebrating the protocol’s 30th anniversary. It will declare that “we are all ozone heroes.” But are we patting ourselves on the back a bit too soon?
The ozone layer is a long-standing natural feature of the stratosphere, the part of the atmosphere that begins about six miles above the earth. The ozone layer filters out dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the sun that can cause skin cancer and damage many life forms. It may have been essential for the development of life on Earth.
So there was alarm in the 1970s when researchers first warned that extremely stable man-made compounds like CFCs, used in refrigerants and aerosols, were floating up into the stratosphere, where they released chlorine and bromine atoms that break down ozone molecules. In the 1980s, Antarctic researchers discovered that these chemical reactions went into overdrive in the super-cold polar stratospheric clouds that formed over the frozen continent. They had begun creating a dramatic “hole” in the ozone layer at the end of each austral winter.
The ensuing panic resulted in the signing of the Montreal Protocol on September 16, 1987. It and its successors have phased out production of a range of man-made chlorine and bromine compounds thought to persist for the several years needed for them to reach the stratosphere. Besides CFCs, they include carbon tetrachloride, hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), and methyl bromide, a fumigant once widely used to kill pests.
So far so good. The amount of ozone-depleters in the atmosphere has dropped by more than 10 percent since peaking in the late 1990s. In response, the total ozone in the atmosphere has been largely unchanged since 2000.
But in the past five years, evidence has emerged that potential ozone-eating compounds can reach the ozone layer much faster than previously thought. Under some weather conditions, just a few days may be enough. And that means a wide range of much more short-lived compounds threaten the ozone layer – chemicals not covered by the Montreal Protocol.
These compounds are all around us. They are widely used as industrial solvents for tasks like degreasing and dry cleaning. And their releases into the atmosphere are increasing fast.
These new ozone-busters include dichloromethane (DCM), a common and cheap paint stripper, also used in foam-blowing agents and, ironically, in the manufacture of “ozone-friendly” alternatives to CFCs. With emissions now exceeding one million tons a year, the concentration of DCM in the lower atmosphere has more than doubled since 2004. Even so, it has not been regarded as a threat to the ozone layer, because its typical lifetime in the atmosphere before it is broken down in photochemical reactions is only about five months. It should, atmospheric chemists concluded, remain safely in the lower atmosphere.
But that view collapsed in 2015, when Emma Leedham Elvidge at the University of East Anglia in England examined air samples taken on board commercial aircraft cruising at the lower edge of the stratosphere. She found high levels of DCM, especially over the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, and particularly during the Asian monsoon season, when strong updrafts fast-track air from the ground to the stratosphere. It seems they were taking DCM along for the ride.
Alarm bells are ringing about dozens of other short-lived ozone-destroying chlorine compounds accumulating in the atmosphere.
How much should we worry? Ryan Hossaini, an atmospheric chemist at Lancaster University, recently did the math. He calculated that DCM currently contributes less than 10 percent of the chlorine in the ozone layer. But on current emission trends, it could be That could delay the ozone hole’s recovery by 30 years, until at least 2095, he suggested.
Others share that concern. “Growing quantities of DCM are leaking into the stratosphere, where it is exceptionally effective in destroying the ozone,” says David Rowley, an atmospheric chemist at the University College London, who was not involved in the research. “The potential for DCM to affect the global ozone budget is profound.”
Alarm bells are ringing about dozens of other short-lived, potentially ozone-destroying chlorine compounds accumulating in the atmosphere as a result of fast-rising global manufacturing. They include 1,2-dichloroethane, a chemical widely used in the manufacture of PVC pipes. There are few atmospheric measurements of this compound yet, “but sporadic data suggest it is a significant source of chlorine in the atmosphere,” says Hossaini.
The risks of such chemicals reaching the ozone layer are greatest in the tropics, where manufacturing is booming in fast-industrialising countries such as China and India, and where, as luck would have it, atmospheric circulation patterns are favorable. The Asian monsoon can propel the gases to the stratosphere in as little as ten days, according to unpublished research seen by Yale Environment 360.
The movement of ozone-depleting chemicals through the atmosphere, shifting from the tropics and concentrating in Antarctica. NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER
Thirty years on, the Montreal Protocol has not begun to come to grips with these chemicals, warns Rowley. “The naïve view until recently,” he says, “was that short-lived [chemicals] didn’t present a threat to stratospheric ozone. Wrong.”
Other loopholes in the protocol are concerning researchers as well. In 2014, colleagues of Leedham Elvidge’s at the University of East Anglia warned that three CFCs supposedly banned under the protocol were turning up in increasing amounts in the clean air blowing round the Southern Ocean and captured at Cape Grim in Tasmania. Johannes Laube, an atmospheric chemist at the University of East Anglia, calculated that global emissions of CFC-113a, once an important feedstock in manufacturing both refrigerants and pyrethroid pesticides, doubled in two years.
How come? It turns out that the Montreal Protocol never completely banned CFCs. “CFC-113a is covered by a loophole that allows industries to apply for exemptions,” Laube says. Confidentiality clauses in the treaty about these exemptions mean that “we simply don’t know if we have found exempted emissions, or if they are from some illegal manufacture somewhere. Either way, they are increasing fast, which makes this worrying.” Trade in banned ozone-depleting chemicals has declined in the past decade, but remains a problem, and has been documented particularly for hydrochlorofluorocarbons.
Scientists knew recovery of the ozone layer would take time because of the long lifetimes of many of the dangerous compounds we unleashed in past decades. But last year, Susan Solomon of MIT – who back in the 1980s became one of the world’s most celebrated scientists for uncovering the chemistry of the polar stratospheric clouds — declared that she had detected the first “fingerprints” of the hole closing. “The onset of healing of Antarctic ozone loss has now emerged,” she wrote.
“The signature of ozone recovery is not quite there yet,” says one expert.
But other researchers remain cautious. There have been some recent bumper springtime holes in Antarctic ozone. The 2015 hole was the fourth largest since 1991, peaking at an area larger than the continent of North America. It was also deeper than other recent holes and lasted longer. 2016 was also worse than average and 2017 is expected to be severe, too.
Solomon blamed 2015 on the Calbuco volcano in Chile, which ejected sulphur particles that enhanced the ozone-destroying properties of polar stratospheric clouds. But Susan Strahan of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center warns that the size of the hole in any given year is still dominated by year-to-year variations in the temperature of the stratosphere and the vagaries of meteorology. “The signature of ozone recovery is not quite there yet,” she says, adding that day will come, but we may have to wait until the 2030s.
Meanwhile at the other end of the planet, ozone losses over the Arctic may still be worsening. The Arctic is less susceptible to the formation of ozone holes than Antarctica, because the weather is messier. The stable air that causes the ultra-cold conditions where polar stratospheric clouds form in Antarctica is much less likely. But it does happen whenever temperatures get cold enough for polar stratospheric clouds to form.
A deep hole briefly formed over the Arctic in 2011. In places, more than 80 percent of the ozone was destroyed, twice the loss in the worst previous years, 1996 and 2005. In both the past two winters, researchers saw polar stratospheric clouds over parts of Britain, says Jonathan Shanklin of the British Antarctic Survey. But they were brief and did not lead to major ozone loss.
Shanklin says an important reason for the sluggish recovery of the ozone layer is global warming. As increased levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide trap more solar heat radiating from the Earth’s surface, less warmth reaches the stratosphere, which cools as a result. This trend has been evident for almost 40 years. A colder stratosphere improves conditions for ozone loss. Climate change “could delay the recovery of the ozone hole well into the second half of this century,” he says.
Protecting the ozone layer “presents a much greater industrial and political challenge than previously thought,” says one researcher.
Should we be frightened? Some of the crazier hype in the early days of the ozone hole – like blind sheep in Patagonia and collapsing marine ecosystems – proved nonsense. But the raised risk of skin cancers from the extra ultraviolet radiation streaming through the thinned ozone layer is real enough – particularly for reckless white-skinned sunbathers. The ozone layer is still as thin as it was 30 years ago.
The good news is that without the Montreal Protocol things would have been a great deal worse, says Martyn Chipperfield, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Leeds. The Antarctic hole would be 40 percent bigger than it is; the ozone layer over Europe and North America would be 10 percent thinner; the 2011 Arctic hole would have been Antarctic-sized; and we would be looking at about two million more cases of skin cancers by 2030, according to research conducted by Chipperfield and colleagues.
Even so, the idea that the Montreal Protocol is doing its job and the recovery is under way begins to look complacent. If emissions of uncontrolled ozone-depleting chemicals such as DCM continue rising, then the gains could be lost. The answer is obvious. “We should be looking into controlling DCM and other solvents, much in the same way as we did CFCs,” says Leedham Elvidge.
The World Meteorological Organization and other UN agencies overseeing the protocol acknowledge that DCM and other short-lived ozone depleting substances “are an emerging issue for stratospheric ozone,” but the government signatories have yet to take action to limit their emissions.
That would involve getting rid of a far wider range of chemicals than so far done under the protocol. Protecting the ozone layer “presents a much greater industrial and political challenge than previously thought,” says Rowley. Thirty years on, there is evidently still a lot to do.
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Systemic failure: Why 1 million Californians lack safe drinking water.
Small, cash-strapped water districts don’t have the financial, political or technological resources to treat some of the United States’ most contaminated drinking water.
WOODVILLE, CALIFORNIA – Ralph Gutierrez usually works seven days a week, a punishing schedule he has kept up for the past 14 years. On most days you’ll find him at the office by 6:30 in the morning, the sole occupant of a two-room cement block building with a handful of desks and a “help wanted” sign taped to the front door.
His job? Gutierrez oversees the water and wastewater services for Woodville, a small rural community in eastern Tulare County in California’s San Joaquin Valley. It’s typical of most communities of its size in the area – wide, flat streets with modest homes, the properties fenced at the road. A gas station and a liquor store double as grocery markets, and just a block from the main artery the pavement fades to dirt.
Gutierrez’s job keeps him busy in and out of the office – reading and fixing meters, cleaning out sewers, managing the books, setting agendas for board meetings and, in general, making sure there is enough clean water for the community of 1,800 people. But these days, that is no easy task. Woodville faced water shortages during the state’s recent five-year drought and endures ongoing challenges from contaminated groundwater, the sole source of drinking water for 99 percent of Tulare County’s population.
Woodville’s situation is typical of hundreds of small communities spread across the valley, which is the epicenter of California’s $47 billion-a-year agricultural economy. Many of these communities are “unincorporated,” which means they lack a municipal government and the amenities other towns take for granted – streetlights, sidewalks and sometimes clean drinking water and proper sewage treatment.
A five-member board manages water systems like Woodville’s, and the positions are usually voluntary or pay is minimal. Much of the region is also classified by the state as disadvantaged. There are some 310,000 people living in low-income, unincorporated communities in the San Joaquin Valley and 65 percent of them are people of color, according to a report published in 2013 by PolicyLink, a nonprofit research institute that focuses on social justice issues. State data also show that the San Joaquin Valley has registered the most water quality violations.
A report by the State Water Resources Control Board found that there are 680 community water systems across California that rely on contaminated groundwater as part of their drinking water supply. Most of these communities, however, are able to safely treat the water or blend it with surface water or other sources.
But rural areas of the state, like the San Joaquin Valley, have a higher number of communities that rely solely on contaminated groundwater. In Los Angeles County, only 11 percent of the population relies solely on contaminated groundwater as a source compared to Tulare’s 99 percent.
That might not necessarily be a problem, but many of the water systems in the valley are simply too small to have the economic, technical and institutional capacity to treat contaminated drinking water.
Carl Carlucci works as a regional chief in the State Water Board’s Division of Drinking Water, overseeing the region that encompasses the San Joaquin Valley. He estimates that his turf covers 1,500 water systems, and 1,000 of those are so small that they have fewer than 200 connections. Some can be as small as 15 connections and still be considered a community water system.
The collision of contaminated water, small community water systems and a lack of political leverage has created a drinking water crisis in the valley – one that community groups and state agencies are working to solve.
“It’s OK to be rural and small,” said Susana De Anda co-founder and co-executive director of the Community Water Center, which advocates for clean drinking water for all. “You should not be penalized and live in conditions with unaffordable and toxic water because you’re rural.”
Economies of Scale
Woodville has two water wells, and in the 17 years Gutierrez has been working there, he’s had to sink them lower as water levels have dropped in the aquifer. Last year, during the drought, the water level dipped dangerously low, forcing him to issue citations to people who ignored directions to stop landscape watering. And things took a turn for the worse when water levels dropped so low that one of the well shafts collapsed, requiring more than $70,000 in repairs.
That isn’t small change in Woodville, where residents pay for the water system’s operation. Most of the people who live in the community are farmworkers, and based on studies of neighboring communities with similar demographics, Gutierrez estimates that the average annual income for households is around $18,000 to $22,000 a year. That’s well below the official poverty line of $24,000 a year for a family of four and the $30,000 a year figure for a family of four calculated by the California Poverty Measure. The big wage earners in town are a handful of teachers, he says.
In addition to dealing with low water levels, Gutierrez also has to contend with high levels of nitrate in the drinking water that sometimes exceed the state’s safety levels. Dairies surround Woodville, and Tulare is the top milk-producing county in the country, bringing in $1.6 billion a year. Animal waste and agricultural fertilizers spread on cropland have been found to be the biggest contributors to nitrate pollution in the state’s agricultural communities, according to a report from the University of California, Davis. Low levels of the inorganic compound can exist naturally in groundwater, but high levels are often attributed to fertilizers, animal waste or leaky septic systems. The California Public Health Department reports that exposure to more than 10mg per liter in drinking water can be dangerous or deadly for infants. It can cause methemoglobinemia, also known as “blue baby syndrome,” which decreases the oxygen-carrying capacity of red blood cells.
And Gutierrez has learned in recent years that the water in Woodville contains 1,2,3-trichloropropane (1,2,3-TCP), a contaminant recognized by the state of California to cause cancer. Woodville is one of around a dozen communities in the San Joaquin Valley that have filed lawsuits against Dow Chemical and Shell Oil, two companies that manufactured soil fumigants containing 1,2,3-TCP that were used by farmers in the valley for decades. The state is on the verge of setting a maximum contaminant level for 1,2,3-TCP and when it does, Woodville is likely to be out of compliance and will need to invest in a specialized treatment system to meet safe drinking water standards.
But Woodville lacks the resources to solve these challenges without assistance. Water rates can’t be raised high enough to fund the treatment systems that will be needed to deal with both nitrate and 1,2,3-TCP.
“It’s very challenging to properly run a water system and maintain them on a sustainable basis,” says Carlucci, “But when you add in contamination issues that many face from arsenic, nitrates, 1,2,3-TCP, uranium and other contaminants, that’s where it gets really, really challenging.”
Lack of Infrastructure
One of the reasons Gutierrez works seven days a week is that, besides his full-time job in Woodville, he also consults on water systems operations for two other Tulare County communities, Exeter and Lindsey, and for wastewater operations in nearby Cutler-Orosi.
Finding and keeping qualified water operators like Gutierrez, who are specially trained and certified in how to safely run water systems, can be difficult. “What’s wrong with a lot of these small communities is they train operators but because they can only pay so much, [the operators] go to get a better job somewhere else that can pay more,” says Gutierrez.
Tom Day knows this well. He’s a full-time water operator for Terra Bella Irrigation district about 17 miles (27km) southeast of Woodville. Twenty years ago the state Water Board reached out to him to see if he could help out a few small water systems that were having problems. Over the years, the number of small systems he now helps to manage has grown to 50 – requiring the help of his son and son-in-law, also water operators.
His biggest system is 300 connections, the smallest residential one is 24, and he also takes care of the water systems for some schools. Small water systems are common in rural areas, but the heavy concentration of them in the San Joaquin Valley is also the result of county planning decisions, according to Kurt Souza, assistant deputy director for the Division of Drinking Water at the State Water Board. Counties have allowed construction of small systems, although state legislation passed last year will now make that harder to do.
“I don’t have many systems that don’t have some problem one way or the other,” Day says. “In this area it’s nitrates, I have some with arsenic and some have gross alpha, which is radioactivity. That’s the way it is up and down the valley. And the drought, with the water table falling, and starting to rise, it keeps it in turmoil.”
Trained operators are just part of the picture. State law requires small public water systems to have governing boards, and for some communities that’s a tall order. “In the smaller systems, there is just not a lot of people to pull from that have the time or inclination to be board members, because there is quite of bit of responsibility,” says Day. “I think that’s probably one of the biggest challenges – keeping people in place on your board. The real small ones, domestic systems, they have a hard time keeping board members. They just quit. You need some longevity to learn what you’re doing.”
Maintaining this “social infrastructure,” as De Anda calls it, is one big challenge. The other is the water systems’ physical infrastructure. Many systems, like the town of Seville in northern Tulare County, have aging pipes prone to leaks, which not only waste water, but also can allow bacterial contaminants to enter the water supply. Day says he’s seen communities with distribution lines made from old oil-well casings and another that looked like it was pieced together out of scrapyard debris.
Problem Solving
In the early part of the 1900s, Allensworth bustled with a railway stop, a school, a church, a library, a post office and other businesses. The town, 40 miles north of Bakersfield, was founded in 1908 by Colonel Allen Allensworth and four other black men as a community for – and financed by – African Americans.
Economic prosperity was short-lived in Allensworth, but the community has endured, albeit with a different demographic these days. Some of the town’s original buildings have been preserved or restored in a state historic park and they’re in better shape than many of the homes in which residents, the majority of which are now Latino, currently reside.
A community where many work as farm laborers, Allensworth struggles to provide safe drinking water to its 470 residents. A sign at the entrance of the historical park warns visitors to boil water before drinking. John Burchard, an 85-year-old retired science professor, operates the water system, which has only 140 connections. Most recently Allensworth has been plagued by bacterial problems thanks to its aging and leaky pipes, which is not helped by the fact that someone has been illegally grazing cattle next to the town’s groundwater wells, says Burchard.
Getting Allensworth’s water problems fixed would take the installation of a continuous chlorination system that would clean the water as it passes through the distribution system. The price tag? Just $17,000. It doesn’t seem like much but “it’s a lot of money for a small water district – basically they don’t have it,” says Burchard. “We could have it up and running in three weeks if we had the money.”
There are a number of funding options available for communities like Allensworth, which just received an emergency grant from the state to cover the cost of the project. The Drinking Water State Revolving Fund provides low-interest loans, principal forgiveness and technical assistance to public water systems for things like water treatment systems, distribution systems, pipeline extensions and water meters. California’s drought also kick-started another line of funding from Proposition 1, a ballot measure California voters approved in 2014. Proposition 1 designated $7.5 billion for water projects, including $260 million for small community wastewater projects and another $260 million for drinking water projects.
Some of the state’s funding provides resources exclusively to small, disadvantaged communities of fewer than 10,000 people, including technical assistance programs to help them develop, fund and implement Proposition 1 grants.
The drawback is that completing projects takes a long time and often requires two rounds of funding – one for planning and design, and another for construction. The entire process could take more than five years, according to Carlucci.
Money has been allotted to a variety of different projects, but Carlucci says the state’s preferred solution for small, struggling water systems is to help them consolidate with bigger neighboring systems if possible. And in 2015, the California Legislature passed a bill, SB 88, which gives the state authority to order consolidation in certain circumstances.
The second preferred solution would be to drill a new well, but sometimes test wells don’t turn up clean water, either. This leaves the option that Carlucci says the state tries to avoid as much as possible – funding water treatment systems. These require long-term operation and maintenance costs that struggling communities often can’t shoulder.
The story of Lanare, a small town of fewer than 600 people in Fresno County, is often told as a cautionary tale. Lanare received a $1.16 million federal grant to pay for an arsenic treatment plant, but the town could afford to keep the facility running for only a few months. Residents were stuck with debt and dirty water as the plant sat idled.
Communities like Lanare pose the biggest challenge right now. James Maughan, the assistant deputy director for the Division of Financial Assistance at the State Water Board, says the communities that face the worst prospects are those that are too far away to connect to a neighboring system and without the economic means to maintain a treatment facility. “Right now there is really no solution,” says Maughan.
That is part of the reason why groups like the Community Water Center are advocating for the passage of a bill proposed this year, SB 623, which would create a safe drinking water fund within the state treasury.
“SB 623 would create a sustainable source of finance that would be available for these public water systems to tap into for operations and maintenance so that they don’t have to increase water rates,” De Anda says. “That’s the biggest gap – that’s the missing link – if we could get this passed we would really help advance the human right to water.”
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In California's farm belt, 'pesticide drift' has residents worried about their health.
Residents want new laws to protect 500,000 children who go to school near fields sprayed with pesticides.
Residents want new laws to protect 500,000 children who go to school near fields sprayed with pesticides
By Kim Brunhuber, CBC News Posted: Sep 28, 2016 5:00 AM ET Last Updated: Sep 28, 2016 5:00 AM ET
In Sacramento county alone, prime California farm country, 30 schools are within half a kilometre of fields that receive 14 million kg of pesticides. (Kim Brunhuber/CBC)
Kim Brunhuber
Los Angeles correspondent
Kim Brunhuber is a CBC News Senior Reporter based in Los Angeles. He has travelled the world from Sierra Leone to Afghanistan as a videojournalist, shooting and editing pieces for TV, radio and online. Originally from Montreal, he speaks French and Spanish, and is also a published novelist.
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Four-year-old Roberto Diaz is a round little fellow who strides confidently out into the yard. It's early, before most daycares would open. However this one in Courtland — 35 kilometres north of Sacramento in California's agricultural heartland — is for the children of the mostly poor, mostly Latino, farm workers, whose shifts in the fields often start before dawn.
But those who care for these kids believe they may not be safe here.
Rosalva Beas, a daycare worker in Courtland, Calif., says the pesticides from the nearby pear orchards are making children sick. (Kim Brunhuber)
According to Rosalva Beas, a caregiver at the daycare, there's danger in the wind. Beas looks through the fence, past the playing kids, towards the distant pear orchards.
Wind blows pesticides toward the daycare
"When they spray pesticides, the wind blows this way and it contaminates this area," she says.
Insecticides and the fumigants that carry them can disperse further than industry experts say they’re supposed to travel, a phenomenon known as 'pesticide drift.' (Kim Brunhuber/CBC)
It's known as pesticide drift: Chemicals applied to fields and orchards can sometimes disperse further than industry experts claim they're supposed to travel. According to California's Department of Health, 500,000 California kids go to school within 400 metres of fields that are sprayed with pesticides.
Need for stricter rules around pesticides
When it comes to spraying near California schools, there are no federal or state laws. Rules vary from county to county. Now, some daycares and schools claim their students are getting sick. Residents of farm country are lobbying for tightening of rules over where and when pesticide can be sprayed.
"Before, we didn't see so many illnesses," Beas says. "Now we're seeing more and more illnesses, these kids who are just starting out in life."
And it's not just the kids getting sick.
Childcare worker Bianca Sanchez says she too has become sick from the pesticides because she has to go outside to supervise the children. (Kim Brunhuber/CBC)
"I'm sick now, I got asthma," says Bianca Sanchez, a caregiver at the childcare centre.
"Because when they're doing the pear, everything comes over here," she says.
The pesticides can stay in the air for days, according to Emily Marquez, a staff scientist at the Pesticide Action Network (PAN).
She's demonstrating a metre-high device that looks like a half-finished science experiment; all tubes and glass, it is a low-cost airborne particulate matter detector.
She lends it to homeowners, schools and childcare facilities so they can test their own air, to give them independent data confirming whether there's been pesticide drift. If it is happening, it's especially serious for children, she says.
Emily Marquez, a staff scientist at the Pesticide Action Network, shows how to use a device that measures pesticide levels in the air. (Kim Brunhuber/CBC)
"Kids are more susceptible to pesticide exposure, not only because they're still developing, but also we say pound for pound they take in more," Marquez says. "So for their size, they actually inhale more air and also take in more water."
High rates of asthma among children
The link between pesticides and specific cases of cancer or respiratory problems is hard to prove, says Paul Towers, PAN's organizing director. But he says 20 per cent of children in California's Central Valley, which stretches 720 kilometres through the centre of the state, have asthma, much higher than the national rate. He says doctors are supposed to report all pesticide-related illnesses, but they rarely do.
"I'd say, by and large, most physicians don't have that training or a lot of experience," Towers says.
A recent report by researchers at University of California at Los Angeles found an increased cancer risk from the mix of fumigants and pesticides often used near schools.
Gabriela Garibay, who lived in this camp for farm workers in the San Joaquin valley, believes she contracted a rare form of cancer because of wind-born pesticides (Kim Brunhuber/CBC)
Gabriela Garibay, 27, was exposed to pesticide as a child, when she lived in a camp for farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley and attended a school nearby.
"Once my knee started just getting very swollen, that was like 'OK something's wrong,' My body's telling me something," says Garibay.
Several years ago, she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Doctors don't know what caused it, but she says they told her all pesticides could certainly have been a risk factor.
"The airplanes could go by spraying pesticides and they never tell us to go, and even if they tell us at that point to go home, they had already sprayed," says Garibay, whose cancer is now in remission.
Farm belt residents fight back
Now many residents of California's farm belt are fighting back.
Beas is one of 800 people from the community who recently testified in front of California's Department of Pesticide Regulation. It's now re-writing rules that govern where and when pesticides can be sprayed, which will go into effect in April 2017.
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"Ideally they would create a no-spray or no-fumigation buffer zone within a mile of all schools," Towers says. He's also urging the government to restrict aerial fumigation, and stop farms from spraying shortly before or during school hours.
"This is a really important opportunity to protect our children," he says.
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