Europe's illegal trade in ozone-altering substances.

Law enforcement officials in the Dutch city of Rotterdam and other ports in Europe are beginning to grapple with a problem that their counterparts in Miami know all too well: the illicit trade in chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which destroy the Earth's protective ozone layer. In the United States, scores of CFC smugglers have been arrested since the government launched a special task force in 1994, but in Europe these outlaws have remained in the shadows - until this year. A high-profile bust in the Netherlands and a sting operation in the United Kingdom have drawn attention to Europe's flourishing black market.

Black market profiteers exploit a gray area in the Montreal Protocol, the international treaty that has restricted the trade of CFCs since 1990 and has banned production in industrial countries since 1996 - except for a small volume produced for export to developing countries or for "essential uses" such as asthma inhalers in industrial countries. The doors of industrial countries are now closed to new CFCs from abroad, but they are open to used or recycled CFCs (which can be legally sold to service old equipment) or to new CFCs en route to a developing country. Unscrupulous brokers slip through this door with new CFCs made in China, India, or Mexico, which have until 2010 to complete their phaseouts, or in Russia, which has violated the 1996 deadline.

Cheap, foreign-made CFCs provide an easy "fix" for consumers reliant on outdated technologies. Although industry had eliminated CFCs from spray cans and solvents by the 1980s, it took longer to find alternative coolants. Thus, old air conditioners and refrigerators that still use CFCs will eventually have to be retrofitted to use ozone-friendly compounds. As the pool of recycled CFCs dwindles, prices should rise, spurring the technology shift. But illegally imported CFCs undercut the market.

Despite low CFC prices in Europe and lack of demand for retrofits - two good indicators of a thriving black market - a European Union group that had been organized to study illegal trade was disbanded in 1996 for lack of evidence. British researcher Duncan Brack warned European officials that until they made a major arrest, smuggling would only worsen.

Brack's warning was apparently heeded in July 1997, when customs agents from the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom teamed up to seize 150 tons of contraband CFCs shipped from China to the port of Rotterdam in intentionally mislabeled canisters. Soon after, officials arrested the director of a German company, Taifun GmBH, alleged to have ordered the shipment and to have illegally imported at least 1,000 tons of CFCs and Halons (another ozone-depleting chemical) over the course of a year.

On the heels of that arrest, in September 1997 the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency released the findings of an undercover sting, in which private investigators had positioned themselves as employees of a dummy brokerage, "Trans-Cool Trading," looking to buy black-market CFCs. Within days, they had received a series of offers from suppliers who promised to break the law by mislabeling canisters or falsifying shipping certificates.

Such easy access to illegal CFCs is slowing the momentum of the worldwide ozone repair effort. In 1996, global CFC production levels dropped for the eighth consecutive year to reach 156,000 tons, according to Jim Vallette of the International Trade Information Service. But as much as a quarter of that may have been produced for illegal export. Production between 1995 and 1997 forms the baseline for the gradual CFC phaseout in developing countries. Today's inflated production, sustained by the black market, will allow for high levels of CFC production into the future. At a September 1997 ozone treaty meeting, scientists resolved to study the extent to which these elevated levels are slowing the recovery of the ozone layers.

Recent findings of unprecedented ozone loss over the Arctic may lend urgency to anti-smuggling efforts. In the mid 1980s, public concern over ozone loss was galvanized by the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole; in the fall of 1997, scientific interest mounted over reports of the highest ever recorded ozone losses over the Arctic.