Mario Molina, Nobel Chemist Who Discovered CFC's Destructive Impact On Ozone Layer, Dies At 77
Mario Molina, who shared a Nobel Prize in chemistry for demonstrating the threat to the ozone layer posed by CFCs, chemical compounds often found in refrigerants and hair sprays and whose use was later curtailed by a landmark international accord, died Oct. 7 at his home in Mexico City. He was 77. The cause was a heart attack, said Lorena Gonzalez, a spokeswoman at the Centro Mario Molina, a nonprofit environmental organization Dr. Molina founded in Mexico City.
Dr. Molina, a Mexican-born U.S. citizen, had a newly minted PhD from the University of California at Berkeley when he joined the laboratory of F. Sherwood Rowland at the University of California at Irvine in 1973 as a postdoctoral fellow.
“The one project that intrigued me the most,” Dr. Molina wrote in a biographical sketch when he received the Nobel Prize, “consisted of finding out the environmental fate of certain very inert industrial chemicals — the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — which had been accumulating in the atmosphere and which at that time were thought to have no significant effects on the environment.” CFCs were widely used in air conditioner and refrigerator coolants, spray paint, deodorant sprays and other aerosol products. Working with Rowland, Dr. Molina discovered that, far from having no significant effect on the environment, CFCs presented a grave risk to the ozone layer, a thin segment of the atmosphere that absorbs the ultraviolet rays of the sun. Unfiltered, those rays can cause skin cancer and other health problems in humans and damage the natural environment on Earth.
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In 1974, he and Rowland published their findings in the journal Nature. They met fierce resistance from industry leaders whose lucrative businesses relied on CFCs. In 1977, according to the Los Angeles Times, the chief of one aerosol manufacturer alleged that their theory was “orchestrated by the Ministry of Disinformation of the KGB.” But in 1985, British researchers tracking ozone readings in the Antarctic announced the discovery of a significant thinning — a hole, as it became known — in the ozone layer above the South Pole. Those findings spurred international action to curb the use of CFCs. Adopted in 1987, the Montreal Protocol regulating man-made ozone-depleting chemicals is today the only treaty ratified by all members of the United Nations. In an obituary for Dr. Molina, Science magazine described the accord as “the most successful international effort to fight climate change and environmental degradation.”
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