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- ENVIRONMENT, Page 77Ozone Hole Gapes Wider
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- There was more grim news last week about the ozone layer,
- which wards off the sun's deadliest radiation. A U.N. advisory
- panel reported that serious atmospheric ozone depletion has
- spread from the polar regions to temperate climes -- and is
- worse than anyone thought. In the past decade the amount of
- ozone over the continental U.S. has decreased between 4% and 8%.
- Scientists knew that man-made chlorofluorocarbons caused some
- ozone loss in the temperate zones during winter and early
- spring, but now there also seem to be "significant" decreases
- in summer when people expose the most skin for the greatest
- amount of time. Even before last week's report, the
- Environmental Protection Agency projected that ozone loss would
- cause 200,000 additional skin-cancer deaths in the U.S. over the
- next 50 years.
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