Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 17, 1991                   TAG: 9104170052
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

OZONE LOSS WORSE THAN BELIEVED

F. Sherwood Rowland, co-author of the 1974 study that disclosed that chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, were damaging the ozone layer, said the total wintertime loss over Canada and the northern United States since 1969 could be estimated at about 10 percent.

Rowland, a chemistry professor at the University of California in Irvine, told the Senate subcommittee on science, technology and space that it was likely ozone destruction began before 1978, when the satellite measurements began.

Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated the ozone loss over the Northern United States since 1978 at about 5 percent.

The EPA said the result could be an additional 200,000 deaths from skin cancer in the United States over the next 50 years, nearly doubling the current rate of 5,000 deaths a year.

"While the new satellite data are both startling and ominous in their own right, they do not represent the total ozone depletion which has occurred over the past decades," Rowland testified.

In the upper atmosphere - about 10 miles up - ozone blocks some of the sun's ultraviolet radiation.

In the 1970s, Rowland and other scientists discovered that ozone was being destroyed by CFCs and other chemicals, including halons, carbon tetrachloride and methyl chloroform.

An international agreement signed in 1987 and strengthened last year commits more than 70 countries to phasing out ozone-destroying chemicals.

Sen. Al Gore, D-Tenn. and the subcommittee chairman, is urging the United States to speed up the elimination of CFCs.