Buoyed by the success of leaded gasoline, Midgley now turned to another technological problem of the age. Refrigerators in the 1920s were often appallingly risky because they used dangerous gases that sometimes leaked. One leak from a refrigerator at a hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1929 killed more than a hundred people. Midgley set out to create a gas that was stable, nonflammable, noncorrosive, and safe to breathe. With an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny, he invented chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs.
加鉛汽油獲得成功，米奇利深受鼓舞，現在又把注意力轉向那個時代的另一個技術問題。20世紀20年代，冰箱使用有毒而危險的氣體，時常泄漏，風險很大。1929年，俄亥俄州克利夫蘭有家醫院發生冰箱泄漏事故，造成100多人死亡。米奇利著手發明一種很穩定、不易燃、不腐蝕、吸入很安全的氣體。憑著辦事幾乎從不后悔的本能，他發明了含氯氟烴。
Seldom has an industrial product been more swiftly or unfortunately embraced. CFCs went into production in the early 1930s and found a thousand applications in everything from car air conditioners to deodorant sprays before it was noticed, half a century later, that they were devouring the ozone in the stratosphere. As you will be aware, this was not a good thing.
很少有哪個工業產品如此快速而又不幸地被大家接受。20世紀30年代初，含氯氟烴投入生產，結果派上了一千種用場，從汽車空調器到除臭噴霧劑什么都離不開它。半個世紀以后人們才發現，這玩意兒正吞噬著平流層里的臭氧。你將會明白，這不是一件好事情。
Ozone is a form of oxygen in which each molecule bears three atoms of oxygen instead of two. It is a bit of a chemical oddity in that at ground level it is a pollutant, while way up in the stratosphere it is beneficial, since it soaks up dangerous ultraviolet radiation. Beneficial ozone is not terribly abundant, however. If it were distributed evenly throughout the stratosphere, it would form a layer just one eighth of an inch or so thick. That is why it is so easily disturbed, and why such disturbances don't take long to become critical.
臭氧是氧的一種形式，每個分子含有三個而不是通常的兩個原子。它的化學特性有點兒古怪：它在地面上是一種有害物質，在高高的平流層卻是一種有益物質，因為它吸收危險的紫外輻射。然而，有益的臭氧的量并不很大。即使均勻地分布在平流層里，它也只能形成大約兩毫米厚的一層。這就是它很容易受擾動的原因。
評論
打印
