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Phosgene Present in Significant Amount in the Atmosphere
Phosgene was stockpiled in military arsenals well after the Second World War, but its continued presence in the atmosphere today is due to man-made chlorinated hydrocarbons used in the chemical industry.
Now, a team lead by Prof. Peter Bernath of the Department of Chemistry at the University of York has carried out the first study of the global distribution of the gas.
The team, which also involved scientists from the Universities of Waterloo and Toronto in Canada, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in the USA, used the Canadian Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE) satellite to measure the incidence of the gas in the air between February 2004 and May 2006.
They found that “there was a small, but not negligible, concentration of phosgene in the troposphere”.
The researchers found that the main atmospheric concentration of the gas was above the Equator, though it was present in some quantity in all latitudes.
The scientists further discovered that the levels of phosgene in the atmosphere had reduced since previous studies in the 1980s and 1990s, though its continued presence remained a contributor to ozone depletion.
“There is a small, but not negligible, concentration of phosgene in the troposphere. Chlorinated hydrocarbons don't occur in nature but as chlorinated solvents they are used by industry. They are short-lived and they decay rapidly, but they decay into phosgene,” said Prof. Bernath.
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