Just one year ago, in May of last year (2018), a paper was published in Nature, the world's leading science journal.

The title of this paper, published by a team of international collaborators including the United States, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, is "An unexpected and persistent increase in the global emissions of ozone-depleting CFC- 11). It has been reported for the first time in academia that global atmospheric freon gas is increasing again (Montzka et al., 2018).

Freon gas, which has been widely used in refrigerators, air conditioners, blowing agents, spraying agents and semiconductor cleaners, is a generic term for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), an organic compound containing chlorine and fluorine. Freon gas, once once a dream substance, has been identified as a substance that destroys the stratospheric ozone, but it has since risen from the Montreal Protocol, the international treaty for the stratospheric ozone layer protection in 1987, to all developing countries, including China, Production and use were totally banned. Since 2010, the production and use of freon gas has been banned globally.

How are substances that are prohibited in production and use globally continue to increase? It is possible that some of the products will be released before the ban, but in such cases it is natural that there will be less atmospheric CFCs as time goes by without additional emissions.
The tail of the freon gas, which could not be seen anywhere else, was caught. A team of international researchers including Korea, the United States, Britain, Switzerland, Australia, and Japan, including Professor Park Sun-young of Kyungpook National University, have found that more than 7,000 tons of freon gas are emitted annually in eastern China. The study's findings were recently published in the world's top scientific journal Nature (Ribgy et al., 2019).

The researchers analyzed the atmospheric freon gas concentration data from Kohsan, Jeju Island, near China, and Hateruma Island, south of Japan, Okinawa. As a result, it has been confirmed that about 7,000 tons of freon gas is emitted annually in eastern China, including Shandong and Hebei provinces, after 2013. In recent years, the amount of freon gas in the world equivalent to 40 ~ 60% of 11,000 tons to 17,000 tons. The researchers estimate that China has consistently produced and used substances forbidding production and use until recently, without reporting to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Ozone Secretariats.

The concentration of atmospheric freon gas observed at Kosan and Hateruma Island in Jeju Island shows an overall decline until 2012, but it shows a significant increase from 2013 (see the figure below). The increasing trend is more evident in the data observed at Gosan, Jeju Island than the data observed at Hateruma Island. Especially in contrast to data observed in the southern hemisphere Australia, where concentrations are steadily decreasing (gray solid lines). It means that it is emitted not in the southern hemisphere, but in the northern hemisphere, especially near Jeju Island.
Indeed, as a result of calculating atmospheric CFCs and atmospheric-chemical traceback models, CFCs emissions have been increasing globally since 2012 and 2013, In particular, since the production and use of freon gas has been banned, the amount released from the eastern region of China between 2014 and 2017 is 13.4 gg (giga- gram) per year, or 13,400 tons per year. (6,400 tons) released during the period from 2012 to 2012, compared with the same period of the previous year. After the ban on production and use, it means that the amount of emissions is not reduced, but an annual average of 7,000 tons is emitted.
The area where the recent increase in freon gas emissions has been confirmed has mainly been confirmed in China's Shandong and Hebei provinces (see figure below).
Of course, as the research team said, freon gas from the eastern region of China is not the only freon gas in the world today. Assuming that the results of this study are correct, it is estimated that less than 40% and as much as 60% of the global increase in the amount of freon gas has been emitted outside the eastern part of China. It is difficult to know at this time whether the remaining emissions are being emitted from South America, from Europe or Africa, from other Asian regions than China, or from other regions of China, not East China. It is unclear how the emission of freon gas has increased in the eastern part of China. At present, there is no data available to explain all of this. That's why we need additional, ongoing research.

The results of the study are expected to be the scientific basis for the international community to demand the illegal production and abandonment of illegal CFCs. It may not be that China is endangering the world by illegal production and use of freon, following fine dust. The entire ban on the production and use of freon gas is to protect all life on Earth from harmful ultraviolet rays coming into the Earth from space. When the stratospheric ozone layer is destroyed, no organism in the world can survive.

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Chloroform, which has recently been released in eastern China with Freon gas, is also threatening the recovery of the ozone layer. Refer to [Report File] below

<[File] China's 'chloroform' threatens to recover the ozone layer

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* Montzka, SA et al. An unexpected and persistent increase in global emissions of ozone-depleting CFC-11. Nature 557, 413-417 (2018).

* Rigby, M. et al. Increase in CFC-11 emissions from eastern China based on atmospheric observations. Nature 569, 546-550 (2019).