Chemical Onslaught on Ozone Continues : Environment: UCI’s F. Sherwood Rowland reports chemicals that destroy Earth’s protective shield are still being unleashed on the atmosphere in as great a volume as ever.

Chemicals that are eating a hole in the Earth’s protective ozone layer are still being released into the air at record levels despite international agreements to phase out their use, a world-renowned University of California chemist reported Monday.

F. Sherwood Rowland, the UC Irvine scientist who discovered the link between chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and the ozone layer 17 years ago, released the discouraging results of new tests that show emissions of the chemicals reached a record high this year and are still growing.

“The striking thing is that we haven’t seen the fall-off yet,” Rowland said in an interview. “We thought by now we’d see a little downturn, but we haven’t. The announced cutbacks so far haven’t shown up in the atmosphere.”

Rowland predicted that a slight downturn might come next year, but he warned that the worst is yet to come for the expanding hole in the ozone shield because of the delayed reaction of the chemicals. The hole in the layer--which protects Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation--is expected to continue to expand until at least 2010.

“There is a general perception that we have taken care of the problem,” he said. “But this is a reminder that it’s not enough to say you’ll stop using these materials. You actually have to stop.”

The world’s major industrialized nations agreed in the 1987 Montreal Protocol to cut use of CFCs in half by the end of the century. In June, they refined the pact by agreeing to cut use by 20% by 1993 and 50% by 1995, eliminating them by 2000.

Also, Dupont and Allied-Signal, the two largest U.S. producers of the chemicals, have said they will stop manufacturing them by then. The chemicals are used mainly as industrial cleaning solvents and as cooling agents in refrigerators and car air conditioners.

Despite those announcements, Rowland said the last five years have been the worst in history when it comes to the increase in CFCs entering the atmosphere.

“It’s easier to make the announcements of change,” Rowland said, “than it is to actually do what you promised.”

Rowland and his research team have been collecting air samples at remote sites over the Pacific Ocean from Alaska to New Zealand since 1978. The most recent report, which compares results at more than 60 sites through June, 1990, was presented Monday at an annual conference of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

CFCs release chlorine that moves up in the stratosphere and destroys ozone. The concentration of chlorine in the atmosphere today is five times higher than in 1950, Rowland said.

Environmentalists had not seen the latest data, but they said if emissions are increasing, then the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should act faster to phase them out.

“This is very disturbing to think that the problem is even worse than we thought,” said Lynne Edgerton, senior attorney in the Los Angeles office of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental group. “We have called for quicker phase-out all along, and this just adds fuel to the fire. It makes action more urgent.”

An increasingly major source of the problem is CFC-113, a solvent still used widely by industry to clean electronic parts, according to Rowland’s report. Manufacturers have said they know of no low-polluting substitute for the chemical in most of their metal-cleaning operations.

The chemical “is exploding in use,” Rowland said. “It was a very minor player 15 years ago, but it has become a major one.”

Use of the industrial chemical in 1988 was about three times greater than in 1976, according to Rowland’s data. It is now about equal to emissions from the two other major CFCs that are used mostly in air conditioners and refrigerators and as blowing agents during the manufacture of foam and polystyrene.

In the past two years, the concentration of CFC-113 has increased by 10 parts per trillion per year, according to the report. That is almost a 50% increase in the annual average over the past six years.

The emissions figures are a global average, and Rowland said he cannot calculate the United States’ role. He suspects, however, that use of CFC-113 is still growing.

Earlier this year, the Natural Resources Defense Council announced that most major U.S. industries had not cut their use of the chemicals. Among California companies listed as major users were IBM in San Jose, Northrop Aircraft Division in Hawthorne, Bentley Laboratories in Irvine and Dow Chemical in Pittsburg. All have said they are phasing out use of the CFCs.