Bromine dioxide Bromine dioxide Bromine dioxide is the chemical compound composed of bromine and oxygen with the formula BrO. It forms unstable yellow to yellow-orange crystals. It was first isolated by R. Schwarz and M. Schmeißer in 1937 and is hypothesized to be important in the atmospheric reaction of bromine with ozone. It is similar to chlorine dioxide, the dioxide of its halogen neighbor one period higher on the periodic table. Bromine dioxide is formed when an electric current is passed through a mixture of bromine and oxygen gases at low temperature and pressure. Bromine dioxide can also be formed by the
Bromine regulations (see below). Poisonous bromomethane was widely used as pesticide to fumigate soil and to fumigate housing, by the tenting method. Ethylene bromide was similarly used. These volatile organobromine compounds are all now regulated as ozone depletion agents. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer scheduled the phase out for the ozone depleting chemical by 2005, and organobromide pesticides are no longer used (in housing fumigation they have been replaced by such compounds as sulfuryl fluoride, which contain neither the chlorine or bromine organics which harm ozone). Before the Montreal protocol in 1991 (for example) an estimated