White Light: The Elemental Role of Phosphorus—in Our Cells, in Our Food, and in Our World

Some ecological processes, such as the water cycle, have entered the public consciousness, while others remain decidedly obscure. Lohmann’s first book seeks to rectify that situation for phosphorus, an essential building block of life whose relative abundance has tracked with biological booms and busts throughout geological time. Readily available phosphorus (in various forms of its oxide, phosphate) fuels an explosion of life, which then consumes and depletes other resources such as oxygenated water and leads to die-offs wherein the bodies are compressed and mineralized into rock. When 19th-century English scientist-farmers discovered that phosphorus in crushed bones, guano, and fossils could increase crop yields, the phosphate fertilizer industry was born. This agricultural revolution spawned a global search for phosphate-rich rock, with (like most resource-extractive industries) its own effects, both positive and negative, on local economies, ecologies, and health. Lohmann takes readers from the English coast to the Florida Panhandle and on to the Pacific nation of Nauru, which serves as a metaphorical epilogue, its phosphate wealth unsustainable and the small island turned into an immigrant-detention camp for Australia.