Do any pollutants escape from the earths atmosphere into outer space?

Question

With all this pollution and green house gases etc. I was wondering if anything of this nature escaped the earth's atmosphere and got into space - or does it get trapped by our gravitational field.

Answer 1

There is always a small (very small) amount of anything in our atmosphere that escapes to space. The lighter the molecule, the faster heat makes it go. So lighter molecules would escape more than heavier ones, but some heavy ones do manage to escape.

Pollutants are normally unwanted because they react in many ways with other stuff. For example chlorine reacts readily with ozone so chlorine would react with ozone before getting high enough to escape (still, there would be an occasional chlorine atom or molecule making it out there).

Most of it stays.

Answer 2

Nothing gets out, it is held in our atmosphere by gravity.