Thirty-five feet down, on the bottom of a concrete tank filled with a mil-lion gallons of bitterly cold water, lay a body. The tank’s fifty-pound lid was slightly askew; its usually secure bolts were loose or missing.
Shards of glass—the remains of a beaker for taking water samples—were scattered across the concrete floor. This was in early February 2005, in a state-of- the-art water purification plant in suburban New Jersey.
The victim was Geetha Angara, a well-liked forty-three-year-old hydrochemist. She was the mother of three, the wife of a banker, had a PhD in organic chemistry from New York University, and had worked at the Pass aic Valley Water Commission plant for twelve years. In 2004, the plant underwent a $70 million upgrade, during which a chlorine treat- me nt system was replaced by an ozone-based system.
Comments: 1
Ozone produced near Earth's surface places all life at risk. Any gas released near Earth's surface takes months to get up to the altitude of the ozone layer on its own. Ozone produced "down here" has a halflife of a few hours, due to the presence of water vapor. The extra energy necessary to make this ozone will both loft more water vapor,
Ozone is toxic and highly corrosive. We really do not want ozone at the earth's surface. There is no mechanism to get ozone generated at the surface to the ozone layer and trying to take an ozone generator that high would be very difficult if not impossible.