Check back soon
Once posts are published, you’ll see them here.
“More sunscreen, anyone? The hole in the ozone will be over us in 30 minutes!” our Norwegian friend, Ole, casually exclaimed as we pulled weeds in the garden. He was watching his ozone tracker app to see how the atmosphere was changing over our heads. Um, excuse me? Did he just say the hole in the ozone layer will pass over us? Isn’t that, like, extremely dangerous?
Hello from AUSTRALIA! We’ve spent the last month working at an eco-retreat center near Byron Bay, New South Wales. We spend almost all of our work time outside in a massive permaculture garden and most of our free time at the beach! With this constant exposure to sun, I was a little more than unnerved to hear about the hole in the ozone layer right over Australia.
Sure enough, according to the Australian Government Department of Environment & Energy, Australians live under a particularly thinned area of the ozone layer. While, the actual "ozone hole," is over Antarctica, the ozone around Australia has depleted in the atmosphere 5-9% just since the 1960s! This, coupled with the Australian outdoors-tailored lifestyle means that Australians have an extra large risk of overexposure to UV radiation.
What exactly is the ozone layer? This term refers to the high levels of ozone (O3) concentrated in the stratosphere layer of Earth’s atmosphere. This layer protects the Earth and all living things from over-exposure to harmful UV-radiation from the sun. Without the ozone layer, we would all be burned to a crisp. We literally need it to live!
So, here we are gardening all day in Australia with the sun beating down on our backs (not to mention my near-weekly sunburns), with just a thin layer of ozone left to protect our skin from UV-exposure! This is pretty freaky stuff! I needed to find out more.
It turns out that the thinning of this molecule in our atmosphere has occurred as a result of human use of ozone depleting substances-- that is products that contain chlorofluorocarbons, halons, carbon tetrachloride, methyl chloroform, hydrobromofluorocarbons, hydrochlorofluorocarbons, methyl bromide, and bromochloromethane. And that means?? Gross chemicals found in refrigerators, air conditioners, foam, aerosol propellants, and methyl bromide for soil fumigation.
Some of these chemicals have been banned, but not all of them. We can help by eliminating aerosol products from our lives, buying AC and refrigerators that don’t use HCFCs as refrigerant, checking in on our AC and refrigeration units regularly to prevent refrigerant from leaking, and recycling any HCFC or CFC operating appliances that we do already own (including the AC units in our cars).
Fortunately, the ozone is healing in our atmosphere as a result of many international substance regulations (such as The Montreal Protocol. However, the healing process is slow. The hole in the ozone over Australia is expected to recover...but only to pre-1980’s levels by 2050. Let’s do our part by spreading awareness and managing what products we’re using! Our garden-baked skin down here is relying on it!
While the hole in the ozone is healing, there are still many human-caused climate change issues. If you're still not fired up about these issues, check out this video about carbon dioxide emissions.
More info. On our Australian travels coming soon! Thanks for following along with our blog and our Instagram @one.way.wanderers!
Much love,
Allie
References:
"The Ozone Layer." Other Degradable Polymers. Accessed December 11, 2018. http://www.environment.gov.au/protection/ozone/ozone-science/ozone-layer.
"The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer." U.S. Department of State. Accessed December 11, 2018. https://www.state.gov/e/oes/eqt/chemicalpollution/83007.htm.