Sorry, annap, occupational hazard for environmentalists is scaring people out of their wits. Apologies. The story has its funny side: what happened was that the British had a monitoring system they had set up which reported for a number of years that nothing was wrong with the ozone layer. An expedition went down and discovered that the computer in charge of the monitoring system had been throwing out the readings because they were too low, so it assumed that there was a malfunction. So these were essentially the first maps of the problem anyone had seen -- I have, if anything, understated how stunned everyone was. It was a bit like the scene in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" where the scientists have seen the advance ships and think, oh well, no big deal; and then the mother ship arrives!!
It was these findings that galvanized the global community into signing the Ozone Treaty, which is supposed to phase out the use of chlorofluorocarbons (the big culprits) over the next 50 years. The signs are that this phasing out is occuring, with some fluctuations. The problem (like a lot of environmental problems these days) is that you can't turn these things off with a switch like some politicians think. The hole in the ozone layer off Antarctica has been increasing to the point where it is beginning to affect southern South America and Tasmania. The current theory says that it will gradually go down again, but nobody knows. There are now severe ozone depletion episodes in the Northern Hemisphere, which will continue for the next 30 years or so, and we hope they won't get worse. Nobody knows -- we have not conducted an experiment like this on the earth before.
Skin cancer is obviously the big immediate problem for humans, but there are signs that the increase in ultra-violet rays is affecting some basic ecosystems, such as plankton in the oceans. This is pretty scary; but some scientists argue that these natural systems are developing self-protection, and so we shouldn't worry. We don't know. I personally think it is stupid to gamble with the earth this way; but lots of people seem not to care. We have basically been relying on the earth to be resilient enough to cope: it has up to this point, and it will certainly be able to survive in some form whatever human beings do it -- human beings may not make it, but you can bet on the cockroaches and weeds. There will be something here after this little experiment in human supremacy crashes and burns.
As an working environmentalist, I think that there are more important immediate environmental threats to your personal well-being. Not to depress you further, but if I lived in New Jersey I would immediately go out and buy Sandra Steingraber's recent paperback book "Living Downstream" which is an excellent, very balanced, book on chemical sources of breast cancer and other estrogen related environmental problems across the U.S. THIS IS A BOOK EVERY WOMAN SHOULD READ! (MEN TOO).
Award for most depressing thread, in the mail to me, I'm sure.
yours, Peter T.