More About Rowland and Molina
In
December of 1973, both Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland were professors of
chemistry at the University of California at Irvine. Molina had been at the
school for only a few months while Rowland, his postdoctoral advisor had been
there for several years. Molina approached Rowland with some calculations he
had derived which indicated that CFCs that made their way into the upper
atmosphere could break down and destroy the precious ozone layer. Rowland
looked over the calculations and saw that Molina's work had potential to be
correct. The two men worked together for two days examining the results of
Molina's work. This one discovery would change the way scientists looked at
CFCs and many other "harmless" chemicals.
At that
time, worldwide production of CFCs was about 1 million tons per year. After
studying the reactions that CFCs might participate in the troposphere, the two
scientists realized that there was little chance that these highly unreactive
chemicals would be removed from our atmosphere. As a result, they theorized
that CFCs would slowly drift up to the stratosphere where ultraviolet light
could cause them to release a chlorine molecule. This molecule was the key to
the destruction of the ozone in the stratosphere. It would take many years for
the two scientists to convince the scientific community that their theory was
correct, but in the end, they succeeded.