If you bought a Prius because it emitted less CO2 and you don't realize the batteries are making acid rain worse, you probably supported, along with Al Gore, ethanol all throughout the 1990s - because you don't understand how systems work.
Likewise, chemicals that helped solve the last global environmental crisis in the 1990s manufactured by the media — the hole in Earth's protective ozone layer — is making the acid rain worse, scientists are reporting. Their study on the chemicals that replaced the ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) once used in aerosol spray cans, air conditioners, refrigerators, and other products, appears Physical Chemistry A.
Jeffrey Gaffney, Carrie J. Christiansen, Shakeel S. Dalal, Alexander M. Mebel and Joseph S. Francisco point out that hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) emerged as CFC replacements because they do not damage the ozone layer. Later suggested the need for a replacement for the replacements because HCFCs act like super greenhouse gases, 4,500 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
The new study adds to those concerns, raising the possibility that HCFCs may break down in the atmosphere to form oxalic acid, one of the culprits in acid rain.
This forest was damaged by acid rain, which contains a corrosive ingredient that can result from the breakdown of chemicals that help protect the Earths ozone layer. Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
They used a computer model to show how HCFCs could form oxalic acid via a series of chemical reactions high in the atmosphere. The model, they suggest, could have broader uses in helping to determine whether replacements for the replacements are as eco-friendly as they appear before manufacturers spend billions of dollars in marketing them.
Source: American Chemical Society