Natural Disasters
As a professional and responsible contractor, it is your duty to respect the earth and do all that you can to protect the planet for your families and ours. Money should not be a factor when making your decision on removing environmental contaminants like refrigerants from your jobsite. If as the sub-contractor, you do not want to be responsible for removing the refrigerant simply specify that in your quote so the general contractor can have someone can get it done. Venting and torching refrigerant lines causes a deadly gas called Phosgene, which can be deadly if inhaled.
In the 1980s, scientists discovered that the ozone layer was thinning in the lower stratosphere, with particularly dramatic ozone loss—known as the “ozone hole”—in the Antarctic spring (September and October).
Scientists also discovered that the thinning in the ozone layer was caused by increasing concentrations of ozone-depleting chemicals – chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs (compounds with chlorine and/or fluorine attached to carbon) and to a lesser extent halons (similar compounds with bromine or iodine). These chemicals can remain in the atmosphere for decades to over a century.
At the poles, CFCs attach to ice particles in clouds. When the sun comes out again in the polar spring, the ice particles melt, releasing the ozone-depleting molecules from the ice particle surfaces.
Once released, these ozone-destroying molecules do their dirty work, breaking apart the molecular bonds in UV radiation-absorbing ozone.
