It is two-faced! A murderer of all living things, ozone also promotes life on the Earth in many ways. This paradox is easy to explain. Solar radiations are not uniform. They contain what are known as ultraviolet rays. If all these reached the Earth's surface, life on Earth would be impossible because these rays carry an immense amount of energy and are fatal to living organisms.

   Fortunately, only a very small fraction of the Sun's ultraviolet rays reach the Earth's surface. Most of them lose their force in the atmosphere at an altitude of 20-30 kilometres. At this level of the air blanket enveloping our planet, there is a great deal of ozone, and it absorbs the ultra­violet rays.

By the way, one of the present-day theories of the origin of life on Earth relates the appearance of the first organisms to the time of formation of the ozone layer in the atmosphere. But people need ozone on the Earth too, and in large quantities. They, and primarily chemists, need thousands and thousands of tons of ozone very badly.

   The chemical industry would gladly make use of the astounding oxidizing power of ozone. Oil industry workers would also be pleased to bow down to ozone. The petroleum of many oil fields contains sulphur. Sour oils, as they are called, cause a great deal of trouble, for one thing, by rapidly corroding equipment, for instance, boiler stokers at power stations. With ozone such oils could easily be freed from sulphur, and the sulphur removed could be utilized to double or even treble the present production of sulphuric acid.

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