Illegal Cfc Trade Sparks Crackdown Government Steps Up Effort To Halt Refrigerant Smuggling

A banned chemical linked to destruction of the earth’s ozone layer is joining narcotics as the most lucrative contraband for smugglers, feeding a growing black market that law enforcers are struggling to shut down.

The Justice Department announced indictments Thursday charging more than a dozen people in five states with smuggling into the United States containers of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, a refrigerant used in millions of auto air conditioners.

Officials acknowledged that a nationwide crackdown is stopping only a fraction of the illegal chemical, much of it smuggled from Mexico. To date, 1.5 million pounds have been confiscated, but officials estimated 20 million pounds crossed U.S. borders illegally last year alone.

The profits can be immense. CFCs may sell for less than $2 a pound in India or just across the border in Mexico, where they are legally produced, but would command $13 to $20 a pound in the U.S. black market, experts on the CFC trade said. The United States ended production for domestic use in 1995.

To focus attention on the growing problem, Attorney General Janet Reno personally announced Thursday’s indictments against smuggling suspects in Florida, Georgia, Texas and California and Pennsylvania.

“To CFC smugglers we say: ‘We will find you. We will shut down this black market,”’ Reno told reporters.

Carol Browner, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the latest action “sends a clear message that we will not tolerate smugglers who jeopardize the health of American families and people around them.”

For decades, CFCs ranked among the most widely used industrial chemicals. Sold under the trade name Freon, the chemical now known as CFC-12 served as primary coolant for automobile air conditioners, and an estimated 80 million cars built before 1994 still use it.

The chemical is to be phased out globally under a 1987 treaty.