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.


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