Air Pollution Arctic

In a finding with ominous environmental implications, government scientists warned Friday that man-made pollutants have left the atmosphere above the Arctic "primed" for significant destruction of the ozone layer.

There are no factory whistles splitting the air here in Broughton Island, 70 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Indeed, there are no factories at all, no time clocks to punch, no smokestacks silhouetted against the enormous, empty skies of Canada's far north. The largest "industry" in town is a sewing circle, housed in a one-room, pre-fab building where women fashion hand-made parkas out of the glossy gray pelts of caribou.

The depletion of ozone over the North Pole may be a greater threat than the more extensive weakening of the vital protective layer over Antarctica because the North Pole is closer to more people, according to scientists who are embarking on a two-month aerial expedition to study the upper atmosphere over the Arctic.

In a finding with ominous environmental implications, government scientists warned Friday that man-made pollutants have left the atmosphere above the Arctic "primed" for significant destruction of the ozone layer.

There are no factory whistles splitting the air here in Broughton Island, 70 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Indeed, there are no factories at all, no time clocks to punch, no smokestacks silhouetted against the enormous, empty skies of Canada's far north. The largest "industry" in town is a sewing circle, housed in a one-room, pre-fab building where women fashion hand-made parkas out of the glossy gray pelts of caribou.

The depletion of ozone over the North Pole may be a greater threat than the more extensive weakening of the vital protective layer over Antarctica because the North Pole is closer to more people, according to scientists who are embarking on a two-month aerial expedition to study the upper atmosphere over the Arctic.