Air Force Proposes Early Ban on CFCs : * Military: Ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons and halons would be kept off bases, U.S.-owned plants.

The Air Force has proposed banning ozone-depleting chemicals at its bases and government-owned defense plants by July because of growing fears about the erosion of the Earth’s ozone layer.

In an undated Air Force memorandum, Air Force Secretary Donald Rice proposes a ban--effective July 1--on the widely used toxic substances chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and halons. That date is much earlier than President Bush’s proposed national ban on the use of CFCs by Dec. 31, 1995.

The Air Force announcement could be good news for Hughes Aircraft Co. in Fullerton, which announced in January that it had created a nontoxic substitute for CFCs used in aerospace manufacturing.

Dan Reeder, a Hughes spokesman, said the company has received more than 500 inquiries about its CFC substitute in the past six weeks.

“This is a shock to us as to how soon it would come,” Reeder said. “It’s the strongest word we’ve gotten from the government.”

The Air Force ban doesn’t apply to the majority of defense plants that are owned by defense contractors. However, it could send a dozen contractors that do work on government-owned property scrambling for manufacturing substitutes.

“This is a challenging task, but we expect each of you to take whatever steps are necessary,” said the memo from Rice, a copy of which was obtained by The Times. “The production phaseout is inevitable. The sooner we learn to live without these substances, the less likely we are to suffer a mission stoppage because they are not available, and the less we will contribute to the depletion of the earth’s ozone layer.”

An Air Force spokesman said the proposal was part of an internal working document that is subject to change. The Air Force had planned to ban CFCs use by 1997, three years before the deadline for the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement that would ban CFC use worldwide by the year 2000.

“No final decision has been made,” said Capt. George Sillia, an Air Force spokesman in Washington. “Each service will have a different program for phaseout.”

Ditas Shikiya, a program supervisor for toxic waste at the South Coast Air Quality Management District, said the Air Force proposal “would be a great big step.”

“We would support such a decision for an earlier phaseout. But we would look at the economic side of it too,” he said.

The government once owned and operated about 114 defense plants as part of an effort to control overhead costs and preserve an industrial base, but it decided to sell off the plants in the 1960s and has only about a dozen plants left, an Air Force spokesman said.

Hughes operates a missile plant in Tucson, Ariz., at a site partially owned by the Air Force. Michael Letson, a Hughes spokesman, said he wasn’t sure how the ban would affect the plant. He said the company has a long-term plan to phase out use of CFCs, which are primarily used as refrigerants and cleaning solvents throughout industry.

General Dynamics Corp. operates a government-owned plant in Ft. Worth, Tex. The company hopes to implement a substitute for its CFCs later this year, said spokesman Joe Stout.

Northrop Corp.’s B-2 Stealth bomber assembly plant in Palmdale would be subject to a ban because it is owned by the Air Force.

“We don’t have anything to comment on since it is not official yet,” said Jim Hart, a Northrop spokesman.

Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach isn’t affected because the plant is owned by the company.

But Richard Kuhn, director of safety, health and environmental affairs at the the St. Louis contractor, said a C-17 military cargo plane parts plant in Columbus, Ohio, and a subassembly plant for various military products in Tulsa, Okla., would be affected.

Bush decided last month to accelerate the Montreal Protocol deadline from 2000 to 1996 after a new study suggested that the protective ozone layer, which shields Earth from harmful ultraviolet rays, has been eroding faster than anticipated in the Northern Hemisphere.

As the ozone layer becomes thinner, people are exposed to more ultraviolet rays that can cause skin cancer and cataracts.

The ban would also extend to carbon tetrachloride and methyl chloroform, used primarily as cleaning solvents. And it would also include halons, used primarily as fire suppression agents.

The release states that the ban would be difficult for some locations to implement. As a result, the Air Force would consider appeals to grant permission for use of recycled substances or grant an exemption on a case-by-case basis.