• Refrigerants have detrimental effects on the Earth's atmosphere.window air conditioner image by Aaron Kohr from Fotolia.com
  
  The Montreal Protocol of 1987 established international requirements for the phasing out of ozone-damaging chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, refrigerants are CFCs. While refrigerants are extremely effective in devices such as refrigerators, air-conditioners and heating pumps, leakages can cause ozone damage and global warming.
  
  

Cooling and Heating

• Air-conditioning devices, heating pumps and refrigerators used refrigerants to manipulate air molecules to change and control their original temperature for almost 40 years before the Montreal Protocol.
  
  

Ozone Depletion

• When refrigerants leak from appliances, they destroy ozone molecules and cause ozone depletion. Refrigerants have atmospheric lifelines long enough to allow them to be pushed into the stratosphere of the Earth's atmosphere. While in the atmosphere, refrigerants release chlorine or bromine when they break down, two chemicals that damage the ozone layer. Natural processes do not break down refrigerants and other CFCs, so their damaging presence is permanent.
  
  

Global Warming

• Refrigerants and other CFCs are greenhouse gases, or gases that warm the Earth's atmosphere when they become trapped in the stratosphere. Although there are greater amounts of CO2, a natural greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere, CFC molecules are 10,000 times more effective at trapping heat than CO2 molecules. Additionally, refrigerants and CFCs have a lifespan of 110 years and natural processes cannot destroy them.