Fluorocarbons and the Environment: The Public Policy Perspective

Abstract

This chapter discusses the public policy perspective of fluorocarbons and their impact on the environment. The problem is an exceptionally peculiar issue of public policy in which scientists, industrialists, economists, government officials, and the general public will have to work together to arrive at difficult decisions affecting them all. The possible hazards resulting from fluorocarbons were not even imagined when the substances were first developed in the 1930s, and the hazards later identified would result from the very characteristics that made them so attractive in the first place. Rapid expansion of the fluorocarbon industry has occurred recently and any ozone reduction occurring from fluorocarbon emissions would not reach its maximum effect until a decade or more following release of those fluorocarbons at the ground, because of the atmospheric residence times and the slowness of atmospheric transport.