The anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide when taken in small doses produces symptoms of drunkenness. There is not natural occurring chemical reactions that destroy it in the troposphere.
Nitrous oxides when released drift around in the atmosphere and find their way up into the stratosphere. Once in the stratosphere, ultraviolet radiation causes reactions that break up nitrous oxides and produce NO which reacts with the ozone.
Crutzen in 1974 identified the problem that by adding nitrate fertilizer to soil in general that we are providing a raw material for denitrifying bacteria to feast on and, consequently, adding to the problem of N O in the stratosphere and NO in the stratosphere.
Nitrous oxide is also added to the atmosphere by combustion whenever coal or oil is burned in the air. The heat from the fire causes a breakdown of some of the nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere and some is then combined with oxygen to make N O. These nonbiological nitrous oxides follow the same atmospheric cycle as laughing gas is released by denitrification.
In 1989 the measured amount of N O in the troposphere was 304 parts per billion (ppb) and rising at a rate of 0.7 ppb per year. It is erroneous to believe that refusing to purchase spray cans containing CFCs, the potential hazards from nitrous oxide used as a propellant is just as bad.
Of the several hundred million tons of N O being released in the troposphere each year, only a few tens of millions of tons get transferred to the stratosphere.
The engines of high altitude aircraft emit NOx directly as a combustion byproduct. Rocket motors similarly deposit NOx in launch plumes. Space shuttle re-entering earth’s atmosphere from space produce N0 by fractional of the air. N0x are generated during photochemical decomposition of anthropogenic N 0 which is released at ground level and transported into the stratosphere.
The major source of atmospheric N 0 is in bacterial denitrification processes. The second source is in combustion and lightening. Humans contribute in the use of manufactured fertilizers where by fixed nitrogen applied to soil is reduced to N 0.