ozone layer
Summary of Learning of the Ozone Experience
On the 16th of September 1987, negotiators meeting in Montreal finalized a landmark in international environmental diplomacy: the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer. The Successful Conclusion of the negotiations in Montreal was widely hailed at the time as a historic even. As the protocol was the most ambitious attempt ever to combat environmental degradation on a global scale. In the 10 years since that meeting in Montreal, the accord has set in motion myriad actions by national governments, international organizations, scientists, private enterprises, and individual consumers.
The results are clear: by 1995, global production of the most significant ozone-depleting substance (ODS) the chlorine, containing chlorofluorocarbon (CFCs) was down 76 percent from its peak in 1988. But three is a substantial lag between the time when emissions begin to decline and the point at which the ozone layer begins to recover, as it takes years for CFCs and other ozone-depleting compounds to reach the stratosphere, and some last for centuries once there. Yet it is clear that the Montreal Protocol ushered in a new era of environmental diplomacy. Although in some ways the ozone story is an inspiration, in other respects it is a cautionary tale.
Since it’s beginning, the ozone experience has been characterized by a path breaking partnership between scientist and international policymakers. When CFCs were invented in the late twenties, they were viewed as wonder chemicals nontoxic, nonflammable, non-corrosive, and stable. The seeds of the Montreal Protocol were sown in 1974, when chemist Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland at the University of California at Irvine published a landmark article in Nature. It hypothesized that the stability CFCs, while an asset for industrial applications, might prove deadly for the ozone layer.
Yet the scientific process was initially slow to yield clear answers. Indeed, models in the early eighties suggested that CFCs would cause less severe ozone depletion than Molina and Rowland had initially hypothesized. Fortunately, the scientific collaboration initiated years earlier began to bear fruit. Two months after the Vienna agreement was reached, a scientific bombshell provided a much-needed jolt to protocol negotiations just then getting under way. The findings took the world by surprise: no such precipitous decline had been predicted by any atmosphere models.
Ten years after the historic Montreal signing ceremony, the response to the protocol around the world has been substantial indeed.
In conclusion, Canada should be thankful, not disrespectful, of Trudeau’s implementation if the WMA during the October Crisis of 1970. His actions were acceptable because of the fear presented by the FLQ, the public and governmental demands, and the end result of the October Crisis.
Third world countries and underdeveloped nations have become the new proverbial Petri dish of experimentation and offer particular conditions which researchers would never be able to find in their home countries. This only serves to highlight the problem that inherently faces all research studies, the ethical debate in regards to the protection and rights of their subjects. Is it feasible to expect the same standards to apply in certain countries where an economical imbalance between what is possible and what is not can be the largest hurdle to overcome? These are key issues examined in the New England Journal of Medicine by author Marcia Angell, M.D., and co-authors Harold Varmus, M.D. and David Satcher, M.D. in their respective articles that consider the ethical standards that should prevail in such circumstances. Should researchers be upheld to universal standards, or are the standards more applicable in a “local” sense, where the conditions and the constraints of the location provide the context for how the principles should be applied?
During the process of research, professionals collect data or identifiable private information through intervention or interaction. While this is a vital part of the scientific and medical fields, every precaution must be taken by researchers to protect the participants' rights. Ethics, outlined by the Belmont report; requirements, described by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS); and regulations, laid out by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are verified by an Institutional Review Board (IRB). This procedure assures that all human rights are safeguarded during the entire research process.
In the United States, the basis for ethical protection for human research subjects in clinical research trials are outlined by the Belmont Report developed in the late 1970’s. This document, published by the Nation Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, highlights three important basic principles that are to be considered when any clinical trial will involve human research subjects. They are; respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. (Chadwick & Gunn, 2004)
“Citrohan’ was a pun on ‘Citroën’ – a house like a car. Le Corbusier hoped to mass-produce the pieces of the building by Taylorized methods like those being used in automobile factories.3 Housing shortages in post-war France were a critical matter, and the architect was directing his ideas at government agencies and industrial- ists as much as at private clients... The Citrohan embod- ied the conception of a ‘machine à habiter’ – a ‘machine for living in’ – a functional tool raised to the level of art through judicious proportions, fine spaces and the strip- ping away of pointless decoration and purposeless habits. It was a utopian challenge to the status quo.”
While both cancer treatment and chemoprevention trials involve agents that can cause side effects in individuals, chemoprevention trials diverge from treatment trials with respect to the unit of potential benefit. In trials of cancer treatment or of “adjuvant therapies” (secondary prevention), subjects either hav...
Myers, J., Frieden, T., Bherwani, K., & Henning, K. (2008). Ethics in public health research. American Journal of Public Health, 98(5), 793-801.
Stratospheric ozone absorbs 97-99% of ultraviolet radiation. As this protective layer continues to dissentigrate, human health will suffer. One American dies every hour from skin cancer, a direct result of ozone depletion by anthropogenic chemicals, primarily CFCs, which damage the ozone layer. Alternate chemicals are now being used in the place of CFCs that will not damage statospheric ozone, and there is international recognition of the importance of developing these chemicals. The Montreal Protocol is an international treaty which limits the production of ozone depleting substances. Still, human health is at risk from the deletion of ozone, and the risk factor will continue to rise unless people and industries become more aware of the implications connected with everyday use of chemicals which destroy stratospheric ozone.
1. Capp, Marshall B. "Ethical and Legal Issues in Research Involving Human Subjects: Do You Want a Piece of Me? -- Kapp 59 (4): 335 -- Journal of Clinical Pathology." BMJ Journals. J Clin Pathol, 18 Jan. 2006. Web. 11 Feb. 2012.
Looking beyond the Nuremberg Code and applying it to modern medical research ethics, there are many challenges that it poses. Many have argued that the Code tries to provide for all unforeseen events, which restricts the researcher by requiring him to anticipate every situation, demanding the impossible. The most important contribution of the Code is the first principle, which says that voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. The subject involved should have legal capacity to give consent, should have free power of choice, as well as sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the experiment. This restricts that populations upon which some experiment may be conducted, since many do not have “legal capacity”. For instance, studies of mental illness and children’s diseases have been curtailed because neither of these populations has the legal capacity to give consent. Another group of people, prisoners, are never really able to give voluntary consent since they might be enticed by financial rewards, special treatment, and the hope of early release in exchange for participating in the human experimentation projects. British biostatitcian Sir Austin Bradford Hill also questioned whether it was important to inform a research subject who was receiving a placebo since it does...
Miller, F. (2003). Therapeutic Misconception in the Ethics of Clinical Trials,. The Hastings Center Report.
T.S. Eliot has been one of the most daring innovators of twentieth-century poetry. His poem“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, is different and unusual. He rejects the logic connection, thus, his poems lack logic interpretation. He himself justifies himself by saying: he wrote it to want it to be difficult. The dissociation of sensibility, on the contrary, arouses the emotion of readers immediately. This poem contains Prufrock’ s love affairs. But it is more than that. It is actually only the narration of Prufrock, a middle-aged man, and a romantic aesthete , who is bored with his meaningless life and driven to despair because he wished but
In 1970, Crutzen first showed that nitrogen oxides produced by decaying nitrous oxide from soil-borne microbes react catalytically with ozone hastening its depletion. His findings started research on "global biogeochemical cycles" as well as the effects of supersonic transport aircraft that release nitrogen oxide into the stratosphere.2 In 1974, Molina and Rowland found that human-made chlorofluorocarbons used for making foam, cleaning fluids, refrigerants, and repellents transform into ozone-depleting agents.3 Chlorofluorocarbons stay in the atmosphere for several decades due to their long tropospheric lifetimes. These compounds are carried into the stratosphere where they undergo hundreds of catalytic cycles with ozone.4 They are broken down into chlorine atoms by ultraviolet radiation.5 Chlorine acts as the catalyst for breaking down atomic oxygen and molecular ozone into two molecules of molecular oxygen.
In The Development of Environmental Regimes: Chemicals, Wastes, and Climate Change, the authors provide a simple framework to analyze the development of global environmental regimes (GER) which ultimately addresses why states sometimes agree to cooperate on global environmental issues despite divergent interests. The chapter is divided into five subsections but begins with an introduction to explain the five processes involved in the development of GERs. The authors address questions such as who forms GERs and how are they formulated. Next, they apply the processes involved in the development of GERs to four case studies that are linked to global environmental issues: ozone depletion, hazardous waste, toxic chemicals, and climate change, respectively. The authors conclude that states and non-state actors can come together to address global environmental issues but not without obstacles.
society today. The CFC cans used to be a serious problem to the ozone layer,