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Global Climate Change Digest
A Guide to Information on Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depletion
Published July 1988 through June 1999

FROM VOLUME 7, NUMBER 7, JULY 1994

PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS... OF GENERAL INTEREST: CFC REPLACEMENTS

Item #d94jul14

"The Environmental Impact of CFC Replacements--HFCs and HCFCs," T.J. Wallington (Ford Motor Co., Dearborn MI 48121-2053), W.F. Schneider et al., Environ. Sci. & Technol., 28(7), 320A-325A, July 1994.

Presents a technical evaluation of the impact of HFCs and HCFCs in terms of their ozone depletion potentials, global warming potentials, and ability to form noxious degradation products, by reviewing the atmospheric chemistry and gas- and liquid-phase loss processes of their halocarbonyl decomposition products.

Item #d94jul15

"Degradation of Trifluoroacetate in Oxic and Anoxic Sediments," P.T. Visscher (U.S. Geol. Survey, MS-465, 345 Middlefield Rd., Menlo Pk. CA 94025), C.W. Culbertson, R.S. Oremland, Nature, 369(6483), 729-731, June 30, 1994.

Concern about trifluoroacetate (TFA), a breakdown product of the CFC substitutes HFCs and HCFCs, has focused on its deposition at the Earth's surface and possible increase to levels toxic to plants and soil microbes. This study shows that TFA can be rapidly degraded by microbes under anoxic and oxic conditions, implying that significant microbial sinks exist in nature for the elimination of TFA from the environment. (Although this study concludes that TFA is not an environmental hazard, a sentence was added to the end of the author's abstract by the journal editors that mistakenly gives the opposite impression, according to Chem. Eng. News, p. 7, July 4. The journal will print a correction to the paper.)