What do you all think about the thinning ozone layer and possible affects of sun exposure? I try to get about 30 minutes of sun as close to noon as I can as many times in the week as I can and supplement with Vitamin D but the subject of the thinning ozone layer concerns me.

I've read that it's the UVA rays that are dangerous and getting sun through a window blocks the beneficial UVB rays as does sunscreen, but overall in terms of the thinning ozone layer, what do you think?

I really don't know what to think about it.
Wasn't there something about holes in the ozone over the antartic that open and close and move around? I am not sure that any conclusive evidence exists that the ozone layer is thinner...
If it is I would think that shortening our time out doors is required but our culture has done that for us already. Half hour is recommended, and really if you look at it historically, that is next to nothing compared to what even our recent ancestors did.

Persoanally, I suspect that much of the skin cancer out there is not caused by the sun

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Well, I remember they started talking about the hole in the ozone over Antartica in the 80's and that people and animals were getting cancer in the southern part of South America and then they said in the early 90's that they had found evidence of a thinning ozone layer above North America. They banned chlorofluorocarbons and then in the early 2000's said that the destruction of the ozone layer was slowing.

Then in 2002 they said that while the ozone hole is healing the ozone layer continues to thin.

Then in 2005 they said the ozone layer over the Artic has thinned due to colder than normal temperatures and that it could effect the polar regions, Scandanavia and maybe as far down as Central Europe. Then, in 2008 this:

In 2006, the ozone hole was measured by scientists at 29 million square kilometers. This is approximately the size of North America. In 2007, we managed to reduce the size of the hole to about 25 million square kilometers. But this year the hole increased again in size to about 27 million square kilometers. The periodic changes in the size of the hole clearly indicate that the thinning ozone layer and the ozone hole are still controllable with human intervention.

Then, this year, 2009, they are saying that the thinning ozone layer over Antartica is what's causing the decrease in the ice layer.

I don't know how they prove that the ozone layer is thinning, if it is.


I hadn't heard anyone in the alternative medicine community talking about it so I wondered if anyone had any thoughts.

Dr. Mercola quoted a study that showed that indoor office workers were getting skin cancers at higher rates than outside workers. And I don't know if they actually know for sure that the thinning ozone layer is causing cancers or immunosuppression. But I'm concerned. Though, true, like you say, the small exposures that most of us are getting wouldn't seem to be a problem, probably, we all need to get a little more sun than we're getting, just get out of the sun when your skin is just starting to turn pink.

I work with a guy who works indoors all week and then on the weekends goes out and often gets burned. He's had several skin cancers. I don't know if he gets the cancers because of that setup--indoors most of the time, then burning.

There was some talk about diet being responsible for skin cancers and maybe lack of sufficient omega 3s or sufficient fatty acids.

I personally think that nutrition has quite a bit to do with it, as well as a bodies ability to oxygenate. I've known many people over the years who have practically lived out side and no skin cancer for them. Frankly, I don't think we have a collective clue, but individually, many think the doctors and government are handing us a bunch of hogwash.

Talk of the thinning of the ozone layer and the subsequent devastating effects of the sun on plants, animals, has been around for quite a while. In the early days the blame was put on CFCs, emissions from vehicles, jet planes, factories, etc. So a reduction should have solved the problem. But despite the signing of the Montreal Protocol in September of 1987, many countries have not made significant cuts on these emissions for economic and selfish reasons.

And isn't it interesting how sun gives us cancer due to increased uv exposure but it has no ill effects to the plant and fauna? has anyone heard of ill effect to them?

Im more inclined to believe that its all the sunscreen and lotions and makeup and shhtuff that we are told we need on our bodies. The thinning ozone and all this global warming stuff just sounds like a good way for lots of folks to make more money!!!

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Well its pretty clear to me that things are getting warmer up north. There are reports of lots of ice breaking off at unparalleled rates and native peoples are having a pretty rough time doing all the natural things that they use to do to live.
Permafrost melt is a pretty big issue and the oil companies who have build pipelines across it are concerned about interruptions in transport and the ground shifts under the pipeline. Just how to reconstruct and support a pipeline in boggy ground is not exactly clear.

"According to one estimate, fixing all the roads, sewer systems, and public buildings affected by thawing permafrost in the next few decades could cost billions."
newsminer.com • Melting permafrost poses threats to infrastructure, Alaska economy
Arctic set to see dangerous climate change - environmentalresearchweb

Sure, if someone can figure out a way to make some money off of all the changes they will.

The only thing I know is that no one knows what's really going on, which is kind of scary. I keep reading that the thinning of the ozone layer could be blamed for the damage to coral reefs and plankton but I can't find anything solid that shows that plankton is really being killed.

I remember reading about blindness found in fish and sheep in Tierra del Fuego, which is the southernmost part of South America, during the part of the year when the ozone hole passes over in the early 90's but nothing more on that, so maybe it had nothing to do with the ozone hole.

I did find this article that points to some study that shows that the thinning ozone layer is blamed for the disappearance of frogs (something is certainly killing the frogs) in this except from an article from The Environmental Magazine from 1994, also covered in a New York Times article on 3/1/94:


Investigators at Oregon State University (OSU) decided to tackle the problem. The recent results of their four-year study provide strong evidence that the thinning of the Earth's ozone shield and the resulting increase in dangerous ultraviolet radiation may be the silent stalker of frogs and other amphibians throughout the world.

"We were shocked," said zoology professor Dr. Andrew Blaustein, author of the study. "We didn't think we'd find anything. When we got the results, we still didn't believe it. So we replicated it and now we believe."

In 1973, scientists discovered that human-produced chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) decimate ozone when they break apart six to 25 miles above the Earth's surface. This ozone destruction allows the more biologically harmful ultraviolet-B rays (UV-B) to reach the Earth's surface. Every one percent decrease in ozone causes a 2.2 percent increase in DNA-damaging UV-B radiation. UV-B is also known to be the primary cause of human skin cancer and is linked to cataracts and immune system suppression. It also damages crops and marine algae. The best-known depletion--the ozone hole above Antarctica--measured nine million square miles in September 1992, a 15 percent increase over 1991. Less well known is the steady depletion of ozone over populated areas worldwide.

Science journal recently reported that UV-B radiation over Toronto, Canada had increased 35 percent per year in the winter and seven percent per year in the summer during the four-year frog study. (Ozone formation is triggered by sunlight, so there is always less ozone in the wintertime.) Toronto is at 44 degrees north latitude--the same latitude as the Oregon sites where Dr. Blaustein conducted his field experiments.
The OSU frog study was the first to prove that UV-B is now killing organisms living at mid-latitudes. "Damage to an animal means there probably will be an effect on humans," notes Blaustein. Scientists had widely believed that habitat loss and agricultural chemicals had been devastating amphibians. Indeed, these have taken their toll. But researchers had no explanation as to why populations also declined in relatively undisturbed regions.

Dr. John Hayes, OSU professor of agricultural chemistry, studied the eggs of 10 Oregon amphibian species. Of those 10, he found that the three with the best ability to repair or resist UV-B radiation were the Pacific tree frog, the Western toad and the Cascades frog.

Dr. Blaustein then studied the eggs of those three species in their natural habitat at Cascade Range lakes. Only 45 to 65 percent of the eggs of the Cascades frog and the Western toad hatched. But each had up to 25 percent more hatchlings when their eggs were shielded with a filter that blocked UV-B radiation. The third species, the Pacific tree frog, had a much stronger resistance: nearly 100 percent of their eggs hatched. Not surprisingly, while Pacific tree frog populations are stable, Cascades frog and Western toad populations have undergone such drastic declines that they are now official candidates for "threatened species" listing.

The study indicates that declining amphibian species lack the ability to protect themselves from increasing UV-B radiation. "The bottom line is that current levels of UV-B radiation in sunlight are killing amphibian eggs," says Dr. Blaustein. Amphibians have no hair, thick hide or feathers to shield them, nor are their eggs protected by leathery or hard shells. These characteristics make them vulnerable to UV-B.

According to herpetologist David Wake, "Amphibians are excellent indicators of environmental stress. Since they live in both aquatic and terrestrial ecological systems, they might tell us faster that something is wrong...they're an early warning system." Dr. Blaustein is now planning to research whether other species and life stages besides eggs also suffer from UV-B radiation.

Over Antarctica, the ozone layer thins by as much as 50 percent in the spring, when the destructive effects of CFCs in the atmosphere are maximized by weather conditions peculiar to this area. Simultaneously, the marine plankton there--the foundation of the ocean food chain--begin to bloom. UV-B has reduced plankton production by six to 12 percent. This may have already had an as-yet-unresearched impact on the marine food chain, extending from plankton to fish, to penguins, seals and whales.