Meghan Brockmeyer

Mr. Kemp

AP Environmental Science

4/5/09

Chapter 20 Essay

A. i. Ozone exists as a “beneficial” component in Earth’s atmosphere in the lower

stratosphere, and is most effective specifically twenty to thirty kilometers above
earth’s surface. In this layer, ozone is in the highest concentration and is created
when oxygen interacts with UV rays and causes less of the rays to penetrate down
to Earth’s surface where they can cause cancer, sunburn, immune deficiencies,
and accumulation of photochemical ozone.
ii. Ozone exists as a “detrimental” component of the Earth’s atmosphere when it is
in the form of photochemical ozone. This type of ozone is specifically in the
troposphere and is formed when carious air pollutants undergo chemical reactions
under the influence of sunlight. This atmosphere can damage plant, lung tissues,
and rubber, and is especially harmful and in high concentration above urban areas.

B. i. Detrimental ozone, or photochemical ozone/smog forms when primary and

secondary pollutants interact underneath sunlight and produce a mixture
containing ozone, aldehydes, PANs, and Nitric Acid. More specifically, it is when
nitrogen and oxygen react in air react at the high temperatures found inside
automobile engines and the boilers in coal-burning power and industrial plans to
produce colorless nitric acid which then reacts with oxygen and water vapor to
create the widespread harmful chemicals (including ozone) in photochemical
smog.
ii.

C. The specific area where ozone loss has been the greatest is the region on either
end of our earth, the poles. Forty to Fifty percent of “good” ozone over Antartica
is being destroyed during the Antarctic spring and summer. This period gives rise
to ozone thinning, which gradually gets thinner every year. Two reasons for this
concentrated ozone depletion are the polar vertex-a huge swirling mass of very
cold air that is isolated from the rest of the atmosphere until the sun returns a few
months later- and the ice crystal formation from CFCs which start the release of
CLO molecules in the spring and drastically reduce ozone within weeks.
 Gradually, the polar vertex will break up and mix again.

D. i. The origin of ozone comes from the external processes in the stratosphere in
which oxygen is continuously converted to ozone and back to oxygen by a
sequence of reactions initiated by UV rays from the sun. The result is a thin veil
of renewable ozone at very low concentrations that absorb about 99% of the
harmful incoming UV rays from the sun and prevent it form reaching earth’s
surface. This process has been going on for thousands and thousands of years,
gradually building up our ozone layer, while we rapidly reverse these processes
through our burning of fossil fuels and introduction of pollutants.
ii. The chemical process that takes place when Freon-12 reacts with ozone at high
altitude in the stratosphere is the breaking down of this CFC chemical which
releases highly reactive chlorine atoms, which speed up the breakdown of highly
reactive ozone into O2 and O in a cyclic chain of chemical reactions. This causes
ozone in the stratosphere to be destroyed faster than can be formed. CFCs can
also stay in the stratosphere for years, continually reacting and degrading our
ozone layer.