Freon - What You May Not Know

This week I would like to focus on Freon. You may be asking yourself, "What is she talking about?" Well here's the dish -- Freon is a chemical that causes your refrigerator to be cold or to get your air conditioner chillin' your house down on a hot summer day. What a lot of people don't realize is that freon can be dangerous and is definitely detrimental to the environment. So when you bring in your old refrigerator or air conditioner or even a DE-HUMIDIFIER which I was surprised to learn when I first started on this journey, has freon. Here are some facts:

How should I get rid of an unwanted refrigerator or freezer?
If you are planning to discard any refrigerating appliance that contains Freon, you should have a qualified technician remove and recycle the Freon. Check on this first though, some landfill sites in larger cities are now providing this service. as do we ( FULL CIRCLE).

Is it environmentally prudent to repair my Freon type refrigerator?
Yes, in fact continuing to use it at this time instead of discarding it and buying a new one, is still kinder to the environment, however this is only my opinion. Of course stores selling new refrigerators may have a different one.

Manufacturers are now finally having to comply with new regulations regarding energy consumption. This could have been done a long time ago but there was no motive. Because of this redesigning though, many "bugs" are present that have to be worked out and sometimes the consumer ends up paying for them. On the large scale across the entire nation, the difference in energy consumption is significant, but on an individual basis it likely won't make that much difference to your power bill if you have a 70's or a 90's design.

Does this mean I'll eventually have to get rid of my refrigerator because it uses Freon?
At this point the chances of that happening are highly unlikely. Refrigerators use very little Freon - usually between 4 and 8 ounces. The chance of them starting to leak during normal operating conditions is quite slight. And unlike an automobile's air conditioner, they never need to be recharged and, for that matter, very seldom get into collisions. :-) This is why even though your refrigerator may not be working it doesn't mean that there is no freon.

The meaning of the term hermetic means the system is sealed to the atmosphere. On a typical refrigerator compressor , its electric motor runs right in the Freon gas, the only connection to the outside is the three electrical terminals. Another factor in your refrigerator's favor is that there are just so many of them. The new blended drop in replacements for R12, R406 and R409 will currently be available until the year 2020.

Why is it being banned?
The current scientific theory states that it is because of Freon's eventual effect on the ozone, high up in the earth's atmosphere. The family of Freon type gasses work their way higher and higher into the atmosphere due to kinetic reaction with the other molecules in the air. When released to the atmosphere Freon gradually rises up, even higher then the ozone layer. Once it is higher than the ozone layer it is no longer protected from ultra violet light. Ultraviolet light acts on Freon by breaking it down to its original components. One of these components is chlorine. The liberated chlorine then starts falling back down through the ozone layer changing ozone molecules back to oxygen. Worse yet, what happens on this molecular level is that just one chlorine molecule can destroy millions of ozone molecules on it's way through.

Why is ozone necessary in our atmosphere?
Ozone, in chemical notation as O3, is merely oxygen with three molecules instead of two. It acts like a filter and prevents harmful infrared and ultraviolet rays from entering the lower atmosphere. This is the spectrum of light that is harmful to life on earth. What happens actually is this light causes DNA strands, present in all living cells, to tangle. In larger organisms, such as a human being, the effect can cause cancer. The organisms most vulnerable to these harmful rays would be the photo plankton that grow on the surface of our oceans. If they were to be destroyed, the entire food chain would be disrupted. This would catastrophically affect all life as we know it. The entire ecosystem could die, and of course we would go with it.

So releasing Freon into our atmosphere has very serious consequences, so serious that the scientists have set limits on virgin production of tapering off to zero. There are also laws being established to make it a criminal offense for anyone who releases, or causes to be released, any ozone depleting substance including Freon. This is why you should never tamper with your hermetic system. Only professional technicians have the appropriate qualifications and equipment to do this work.

All of this being said I hope that you choose the way of prudence and take into consideration what all of these changes you make do for future generations.

Your Partner In An EARTH Friendly Lifestyle,
Angie Hayes, Full Circle Recycling