The Hole in the Ozone Is Finally Repairing



The ozone layer protects life on earth from the sun’s most harmful rays. In the early 1980s, the fashion was big hairdos held in place by clouds of hairspray. What few people realized at the time was that maintaining those gravity-defying styles contributed to erosion high up in the stratosphere. The problem was the aerosol cans that pumped out the vaporized hair lacquer. The sprays were pressurized with gases known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were silently tearing a giant hole in the ozone layer above the South Pole. CFCs were also widely used in appliances, such as air-conditioning units and refrigerators. Now there’s good news: Scientists at NASA say the hole is getting smaller and could fully repair by 2050. The hole, which lies above Antarctica, spanned an average area of 14 million square miles between September and October 2022, well below the average of 16 million square miles in 2006. The hole is shrinking due in part to the ban of a class of chemicals often used in refrigerants and aerosols. It’s definitely one of the biggest ecological victories for humanity.