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Speaker 1: to the book of the week. Environmental journalist and award
Speaker 1: winning author Dan Egan joins me to chat about his
Speaker 1: recent book, The Devil's Element, Phosphorus and a World out
Speaker 1: of Balance. I'd wager that for most of us, phosphorus
Speaker 1: doesn't factor into our everyday thoughts or vocabulary. But this
Speaker 1: element holds in it the key to life as we
Speaker 1: know it and thus the power to ensure our continued
Speaker 1: survival or map the path of our ultimate col lapse.
Speaker 1: And that fork in the road is rapidly approaching where
Speaker 1: we either decide to deal with the massive phosphorus imbalance
Speaker 1: we have or just let the clock run out and
Speaker 1: see what happens. Not to be dramatic or anything, but seriously,
Speaker 1: this is not a problem that's just going to go
Speaker 1: away without intervention. But what is this problem? Like, what
Speaker 1: do I mean by phosphorus imbalance? Great question. Phosphorus is
Speaker 1: an element found in all living things. It helps to
Speaker 1: make up our DNA, our bones atp and without it
Speaker 1: life would not be possible. As a resource, phosphorus is
Speaker 1: hugely important as a fertilizer and is widely used around
Speaker 1: the globe in agricultural settings, helping us maintain the enormous
Speaker 1: global food supply we need. Over use of the element
Speaker 1: has led to this paradox where over exploitation of phosphorus
Speaker 1: for use as a fertilizer is leading to a global
Speaker 1: shortage at the same time that too much phosphorus an
Speaker 1: agricultural runoff, is polluting waterways, promoting toxic algal blooms that
Speaker 1: have tremendous implications for ecosystem and human health. When we
Speaker 1: think of wars fought over natural resources past and potential,
Speaker 1: oil or water probably springs to mind before phosphorus would,
Speaker 1: But that might just be the future we're facing. In
Speaker 1: The Devil's Element, Egan takes readers through the past, present,
Speaker 1: and possible future of phosphorus. He shares the fascinating story
Speaker 1: of when phosphorus was first discovered and how it earned
Speaker 1: its devilish nickname. He tells the tale of Peru's quote
Speaker 1: unquote inexhaustible guano islands and the lessons we should have
Speaker 1: learned from them. He explores the impacts phosphorus has had
Speaker 1: on the Great Lakes and traces the increasingly frequent algal
Speaker 1: blooms in fresh water across North America to ethanol production
Speaker 1: in the Midwest, and he ends the book by turning
Speaker 1: to possible futures determined by our relationship with phosphorus. What
Speaker 1: might happen if we fail to correct this phosphorus imbalance
Speaker 1: and permit its continued over use. How can we begin
Speaker 1: to bring the scales back into balance and give ourselves
Speaker 1: more time to recapture phosphorus from the most polluted areas.
Speaker 1: The Devil's Element is an eye opening and gripping read
Speaker 1: that will have you wondering how on earth we're not
Speaker 1: all talking about phosphorus all the time. So let's get
Speaker 1: to talking about phosphorus right after this break. Dan, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for being here today. The Devil's Element
Speaker 1: was such a fantastic and eye opening read and I
Speaker 1: am so excited to dig into this overlooked but incredibly important, essential,
Speaker 1: really element, phosphorus.
Speaker 2: I'm happy to be here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, starting right at the beginning, what is phosphorus, Where
Speaker 1: is it found? What do we use it for?
Speaker 2: Well, phosphorus is an element, but it's not really found
Speaker 2: as as an isolated element in nature. It's always bound
Speaker 2: with oxygen atoms to create phosphates, and phosphates are really
Speaker 2: the backbone of our whole food system. It is a
Speaker 2: critical fertilizer that humans have become addicted to over the
Speaker 2: past two hundred years, and it's worked miracles on the
Speaker 2: crop lands. But the problem is we only have so
Speaker 2: much of it, and we're burning through it at an
Speaker 2: unsustainable pace, and that's having that's gonna have consequences on
Speaker 2: our food supply in the coming years and decades, decades,
Speaker 2: I would say, but it has immedia consequences right now
Speaker 2: because we're using it over using it to such an
Speaker 2: extent that we're following our waters. Because it's not good
Speaker 2: at just growing you know, soybeans and kernels of corn.
Speaker 2: It also when it hits water, grows algae and increasingly
Speaker 2: it's it's spawning outbreaks of toxic algae. It's like we
Speaker 2: turned on a gusher and we can't really turn it
Speaker 2: off now without you know, causing a lot of pain
Speaker 2: and suffering across the planet. At the same time, we
Speaker 2: should be able to control the flow much better to
Speaker 2: eliminate the downside of phosphorus and enhance the upside. And
Speaker 2: the upside is it puts food on our tables.
Speaker 1: How did you first become interested in phosphorus and these
Speaker 1: like this phosphorus paradox and the monumental problems that the
Speaker 1: world is facing with this element.
Speaker 2: You know, I was like everybody else, they didn't know
Speaker 2: how to spell it. I didn't know what it was.
Speaker 2: But it was doing some research for a book that
Speaker 2: came out in twenty seventeen called Death in Life for
Speaker 2: the Great Lakes, and one of the chapters in that
Speaker 2: book dealt with Lake Erie and its history, how it
Speaker 2: was declared America's dead seed back in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: and how we resuscitated it with basically the Clean Water Act.
Speaker 2: And what the Clean Water Act did was it put
Speaker 2: the screws to industries that were polluting the lake. And
Speaker 2: the big problem at the time was detergent synthetic soap.
Speaker 2: It was largely in the fifties and sixties. When you
Speaker 2: buy a box of tide or whatnot, it was almost
Speaker 2: a box of phosphorus. And once they figured out that
Speaker 2: that was causing Lake Erie to turn, you know, distressingly
Speaker 2: green and killing much of the aquatic life, they decided
Speaker 2: to do something about it. And so when I was
Speaker 2: doing this research, I was like, WHOA. The Great Lakes
Speaker 2: book was largely a product of like ten or twelve
Speaker 2: years of reporting that I did at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
Speaker 2: and I enjoyed doing that book, but I kept thinking, boy,
Speaker 2: it'd be fun to write a book from scratch, And
Speaker 2: when I came across phosphorus, I thought I'd love to
Speaker 2: do a book on it. I ended up doing that
Speaker 2: and it was quite a challenge, but it was enjoyable
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned the Clean Water Act and how powerful
Speaker 1: it was in that it really did kind of slow
Speaker 1: the progress of pollution in some areas. But as you
Speaker 1: point out in your book, this Act included a giant
Speaker 1: loophole for agriculture. Why was that loophole left in and
Speaker 1: what consequences did or does it continue to have?
Speaker 2: Well, it made sense at the time because once they
Speaker 2: figured out that, you know, our waters from coast to
Speaker 2: coast and really around the world were turning green because
Speaker 2: of what we were overdosing them with phosphorus detergents which
Speaker 2: would just flow right through the wastewater whatever wastewater treatment
Speaker 2: plants existed at the time and into the water.
Speaker 3: So so once we realized that what was going on,
Speaker 3: that really spurned the Clean Water Act, and they came
Speaker 3: down heavy on industry because that was the major.
Speaker 2: Polluter of phosphorus at the time. With the detergents. Agriculture
Speaker 2: was largely largely left alone because in regulatory parlance, you know,
Speaker 2: they refer to it as point source and non point source,
Speaker 2: and point source is basically anything that comes out of
Speaker 2: a pipe or a smoke stack. And the Clean Water
Speaker 2: actilated the Clean Clean Air Act, it really required that
Speaker 2: we stopped polluting wantonly from these pipes and smoke stacks,
Speaker 2: and if not eliminated completely, then you know, severely limit
Speaker 2: the amounts that we were discharging, and that worked, and
Speaker 2: it worked really well for a couple of decades. Agriculture
Speaker 2: was left alone because they thought this non point pollution,
Speaker 2: which is basically you know, stuff just coming off the
Speaker 2: landscape was too diffuse and not significant enough to really,
Speaker 2: you know, warrant some heavy regulating. But that was in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two, and you know, fifty years later we
Speaker 2: farm a lot differently than we did at that time.
Speaker 2: And I'm going to talk specifically here about you know,
Speaker 2: the capos, the concentrated animal feeding operations or factory farms.
Speaker 2: You know, it used to be that a herd of
Speaker 2: one hundred cows was a big deal. Well, now I
Speaker 2: live in Wisconsin, America's dairyland. It's not uncommon to have
Speaker 2: eight thousand or ten thousand head of cattle. And you know,
Speaker 2: they do more than produce milk. They make manure and
Speaker 2: they do it just like milk every day, and it's
Speaker 2: got to go somewhere. And historically, you know, the rule
Speaker 2: of thumb is it takes an acre to sustain a cow.
Speaker 2: And this is the beauty of the phosphorus molecule. It
Speaker 2: doesn't go away. So in simple terms, a cow in
Speaker 2: a pasture would eat grass. The cow would poop that
Speaker 2: would have the phosphorus from the grass in it, and
Speaker 2: it would replenish the crop land. So it was like
Speaker 2: a virtuous cycle, a never ending loop. Cow poops, grass grows,
Speaker 2: cow eats grass, cow poops, and on and on and
Speaker 2: on and on. Well, we don't have the acreage to
Speaker 2: sustain you know, these these that's why they call them
Speaker 2: concentrated feeding operations. They're basically today the cows aren't typically
Speaker 2: out in past year. They're they're in a barn being
Speaker 2: fed grains from you know, wherever, and and the amount
Speaker 2: of manure that they create is substantial. It's bogglingly huge.
Speaker 2: A rule of thumb is one cow produces about as
Speaker 2: much waste as eighteen times as much waste as a human.
Speaker 2: The difference is human waste goes through treatment and you know, largely,
Speaker 2: and cow manure just goes on the land, whether the
Speaker 2: land needs that nutrient infusion or not. And if it's overdosed,
Speaker 2: it does what everything else does, is it flows downstream
Speaker 2: when it rains, and it ends up in our water.
Speaker 2: As they said before, then it's not growing crops we want,
Speaker 2: but it's growing toxicolgy.
Speaker 1: And I want to circle back to some of these
Speaker 1: downstream effects and the consequences of these algal blooms and
Speaker 1: so on. But I kind of want to talk about
Speaker 1: the title of your book as well, the Devil's Element.
Speaker 1: Where does that name come from? And you know, does
Speaker 1: it relate to when people first recognize the significance of
Speaker 1: the substance. There are so many good little stories that
Speaker 1: you share in your book about this name and sort
Speaker 1: of the magic of phosphorus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been called the Devil's element for centuries, and
Speaker 2: you know, more recently people think of it because it
Speaker 2: was the thirteenth element discovered back in I think it
Speaker 2: was sixteen seventy nine in Hamburg, Germany, and it was
Speaker 2: discovered by alchemist who was trying to isolate the Philosopher's Stone,
Speaker 2: this mythical material that they believed at the time could
Speaker 2: transmute base metals into silver and gold platinum. And the
Speaker 2: idea at the time was that all metals are slowly
Speaker 2: evolving to a more precious state, and what we need
Speaker 2: to do is just find out what's causing that evolution
Speaker 2: and speed it up so you could turn lead into
Speaker 2: gold and get rich. So this guy, his name was
Speaker 2: hennig Brand, operating out of Hamburg, Germany in the late
Speaker 2: sixteen hundreds. He thought it could be derived from the
Speaker 2: human waste stream. So he did a lot of tinkering.
Speaker 2: And these guys were serious laboratory operators at the time.
Speaker 2: I mean, they had equipment that we can't even replicate
Speaker 2: today in terms of how high they could keep heat
Speaker 2: for weeks on end. We can do it on an
Speaker 2: industrial scale, but we don't have the earthenware today that
Speaker 2: they did. And so, through a bunch of urine and
Speaker 2: a bunch of hocus pocus, he eventually baked out of
Speaker 2: these of the human waste stream these waxy, glowing nuggets.
Speaker 2: And this was phosphorus. It had been cleaved from its
Speaker 2: oxygen atoms and it was in its elemental form, and
Speaker 2: it was a real bewitching substance at the time because
Speaker 2: it glowed in the dark and if you like smudged
Speaker 2: it on a wall, you would leave a streak that
Speaker 2: glowed in the dark. But unfortunately, if these little nuggets,
Speaker 2: you know, not much bigger than like a marble, heated
Speaker 2: to just above room temperature, maybe eighty fahrenheit, they combusted
Speaker 2: and burned it, you know, ferociously hot. And that's really
Speaker 2: where it got its name, the Devil's element. And there
Speaker 2: was really no practical application in the late sixteen hundreds
Speaker 2: or early seventeen hundreds for this other than it was
Speaker 2: just a curiosity. You know, it didn't turn anything gold,
Speaker 2: you know, turned out urine can't turn anything gold. Maybe
Speaker 2: a snowbank, but that's about it. So it was it
Speaker 2: just became a curiosity for a while. And then you know,
Speaker 2: as is you know, as how it goes with humanity.
Speaker 2: We eventually figured out how to weaponize it, and at
Speaker 2: first we were using it as match tips, Lucifer match tips.
Speaker 2: That may be another reason for the term devil's element,
Speaker 2: but eventually we made bombs with it, firebombs and cndiary bombs.
Speaker 2: And coincidentally, Hamburg, which is phosphorus hometown, was basically burned
Speaker 2: to the ground in nineteen fifty three by the Allies
Speaker 2: dropping incendiary bombs that were largely made of phosphorus, and
Speaker 2: so the name persists today because the stuff is dastardly.
Speaker 2: When those bombs dropped in the nineteen forties, you know,
Speaker 2: they would burn through anything that they hit, you know,
Speaker 2: whether it was a roof of a home or somebody's skull.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was really really bad stuff. But if
Speaker 2: it hit water, it stabilized immediately, and so it looked
Speaker 2: like it looked like fireworks when you just see those
Speaker 2: globules just kind of coasting from the clouds down into
Speaker 2: you know, I had a Fourth of July celebration. That's
Speaker 2: what it looked like. But when it hit the water,
Speaker 2: it wasn't like ash that just disappeared. It solidifies and stabilizes,
Speaker 2: and so unfortunately today it looks a lot like amber.
Speaker 2: And the region around Hamburg is rich with amber because
Speaker 2: it used to be, you know, a conifer forest and
Speaker 2: all the resin you know, over time it became amber.
Speaker 2: So there's there's long been amber hunters on the shore
Speaker 2: of the Baltic Sea or the Elbe River. And sometimes
Speaker 2: when people grab and think is amber is not it's
Speaker 2: one of these unburned chunks of phosphorus and they put
Speaker 2: it in their pocket and boom. I opened the book
Speaker 2: with a guy who was beach combing on the Baltic
Speaker 2: Sea and he picked up what he thought was a
Speaker 2: fossilized oyster shell and put it in his pocket, and
Speaker 2: his pant leg just exploded and or his pocket just
Speaker 2: burst into flavor. Since he had to go into the
Speaker 2: sea and this was December to put the flames out
Speaker 2: and every time he came back out, it would flare
Speaker 2: up again. And they were going to take him away
Speaker 2: in a helicopter, but they thought he'd take the helicopter down.
Speaker 2: They didn't know what was going on, and they finally
Speaker 2: took him away in an ambulance packed with wet towels,
Speaker 2: and he survived, but he sustained about burns to about
Speaker 2: forty percent of his body. And that's not It doesn't
Speaker 2: happen every day, but it's not uncommon. You can google it,
Speaker 2: and there's warning signs on the beaches and on the
Speaker 2: river banks in that region of Germany to stay away
Speaker 2: from things that look like amber. You know they're using it.
Speaker 2: They use it today too. It's not supposed to be
Speaker 2: used as ancendiary bomb. It burns so hot and so
Speaker 2: brightly that it's used to eliminate the night sky or
Speaker 2: to create smoke screens. It's not supposed to be dropped
Speaker 2: on people, but it is, and the consequences of that
Speaker 2: are and it'll burn to the femur and then some
Speaker 2: so and through a skull, and yeah, the devil's element.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break. We'll be back in just
Speaker 1: a few Welcome back, everyone, I've been chatting with Dan
Speaker 1: Egan about his book The Devil's Element, Phosphorus and a
Speaker 1: World out of Balance. Let's get back into things. As
Speaker 1: you mentioned, we talked a little bit about this this
Speaker 1: phosphorus paradox where there's both a shortage and an over
Speaker 1: use or pollution issue. And in your book you discuss
Speaker 1: some of the issues with the shortage, and you know,
Speaker 1: what will happen as the world runs out of its
Speaker 1: phosphorus supply. What are some of the estimates for when
Speaker 1: that might happen, either within the US or you know,
Speaker 1: just the globe.
Speaker 2: Well, let me rewind just a little bit to just
Speaker 2: explain that. You know, ever since we've discovered it, we've
Speaker 2: craved it, and we've found new sources, and we've inevitably
Speaker 2: run out of those sources. I mean, it started in antiquity,
Speaker 2: when you know, farmers just intuited that, you know, you
Speaker 2: put certain stuff on crops and it makes them grow better.
Speaker 2: And you know, commonly that was manure, animal and otherwise
Speaker 2: humans included. But there was only so much manure in
Speaker 2: you know, sixteen in the sixteen hundreds, So the British
Speaker 2: were really were they were really under the gun to
Speaker 2: keep their crops productive, because you know, it's an island
Speaker 2: nation with limited crop lands. And they eventually figured out
Speaker 2: that bones, and they didn't know why, but bones worked
Speaker 2: really well and that set them propelled them into some
Speaker 2: really weird places, including so the Battle of Waterloo was
Speaker 2: in eighteen fifteen, I believe, and in the five ten
Speaker 2: years after that the British went over and looted that
Speaker 2: whole battlefield. They haven't found any bones. They found one
Speaker 2: set of remains. It was like a curiosity a few
Speaker 2: years ago, but it's just been widely held that there
Speaker 2: are no bones at Waterloo because the British took us
Speaker 2: back to England, ground them and especially built mills and
Speaker 2: spread them on the crops to grow turnips and wheat.
Speaker 2: But there was only so many bones to go around.
Speaker 2: So then we chased after new substances and turned out
Speaker 2: bird poop is a spectacular source of phosphorus, and that
Speaker 2: sent the British and later the United States to the
Speaker 2: western coast of South America, to these desert islands off
Speaker 2: of Peru that are just basically mountains of dried bird poop.
Speaker 2: And at the time they thought that their mountains were
Speaker 2: there were so many of these islands and mountains of
Speaker 2: bird poop that it was an inexhaustible resource. And this
Speaker 2: is talking. We're talking like the eighteen forties to the
Speaker 2: eighteen eighties. By the eighteen eighties and nineties, we'd run
Speaker 2: out of it, and that sent us on the hunt
Speaker 2: for more. And now chemists were involved, and they had
Speaker 2: figured out that it was phosphorus, so they could just
Speaker 2: find phosphorus rich material use it as crops, and that
Speaker 2: led us to sedimentary rock deposits. They're relatively scared scarce,
Speaker 2: and they're scattered around the globe, and that's what we've
Speaker 2: been relying on ever since, like say the eighteen eighties
Speaker 2: eighteen nineties, and in the United States, our main deposits
Speaker 2: are in Florida, and we are, you know, on course,
Speaker 2: we're burning through them at such a pace that we're
Speaker 2: not going to we could run out in three decades
Speaker 2: or four decades. At that point, we're going to be
Speaker 2: dependent on other countries for our nutritional security, which is
Speaker 2: a big deal. It's probably a bigger deal than energy
Speaker 2: security because there's workarounds to oil, but there is no
Speaker 2: workarounds to phosphorus. It's in every living cell on the planet,
Speaker 2: no phosphorus, no life, no crops, And it just so
Speaker 2: happens that seventy to eighty percent of the known reserves
Speaker 2: left are in and the occupied territory of Western Sahara.
Speaker 2: And that's a pretty volatile place right now and could
Speaker 2: become more so as countries like the United States and others,
Speaker 2: you know, start scraping for phosphorus to put on their
Speaker 2: crops to feed they're.
Speaker 1: Citizens, in addition to these Peruvian guano deposits. And it
Speaker 1: does seem like, at least in recent decades, there's been
Speaker 1: like restoration of some of those areas where hopefully there
Speaker 1: can be a more sustainable cycle of this, but there's
Speaker 1: also been exploitation, not just of phosphorus as a natural resource,
Speaker 1: but of people that live in these areas where phosphorus
Speaker 1: is located. And you shared one of these stories in
Speaker 1: your book. Would you mind taking us through that again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the indigenous people of the Western Sahara, you know,
Speaker 2: they are nomadic people, and you know, I had been
Speaker 2: for a long time, and we're all the way up
Speaker 2: until the nineteen seventies when Spain opened up a phosphorus mine,
Speaker 2: a phosphate rock mine on their land, and then Spain
Speaker 2: pulled out real soon thereafter, and Morocco occupied it and
Speaker 2: has controlled the mind ever since, and much of the
Speaker 2: native population of the area has been, you know, basically
Speaker 2: warehoused in these tent camps. They were supposed to be,
Speaker 2: you know, they were talking over one hundred thousand people.
Speaker 2: It was supposed to be a temporary situation when Morocco
Speaker 2: came down and occupied the territory in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: right mid nineteen seventies, and the native people sought refuge
Speaker 2: in nearby Algeria, and it was just at the time,
Speaker 2: the thinking was just let's hold tight and we can
Speaker 2: go back home in a matter of months. And I
Speaker 2: talked to a young woman whose mom was born in
Speaker 2: the camp and whose grandmother was put in the camp
Speaker 2: when she was in her teens, I believe. And so
Speaker 2: you've got generations and generations of these people growing up,
Speaker 2: you know, exiled from their land, and nobody really had
Speaker 2: an interest in that land until they found the Phosphorus.
Speaker 2: And so there was a low grade war that went
Speaker 2: on from the mid nineteen seventies to the late nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2: And it's the UN broker a very fragile peace that
Speaker 2: is kind of fraying. Now there's been guerrilla attacks on
Speaker 2: the mine, more specifically on They built the world's largest
Speaker 2: conveyor belt. It's about one hundred kilometers long to take
Speaker 2: the product from the mine across North Africa and out
Speaker 2: to the Atlantic where it could be put on boats
Speaker 2: and shipped around the world. So this stuff is, you know,
Speaker 2: incredibly valuable, and it forces people to do things to
Speaker 2: each other that they otherwise wouldn't. And you know, it's
Speaker 2: an old story for humanity, but this is one that
Speaker 2: not enough people know about. They don't they think about
Speaker 2: climate change, they think about oil deposits, but they don't
Speaker 2: think about rocks, special rocks in the ground that really
Speaker 2: sustain the modern agriculture system.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny to think of when phosphorus first being discovered,
Speaker 1: people had hopes that it would turn substances into gold.
Speaker 1: But it seems like as valuable as gold in some situations,
Speaker 1: are even more so.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely, But you know it has its downside, which
Speaker 2: we've talked a little bit about. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 2: a life accelerant and not all that that's not we
Speaker 2: don't want all of that life. Specifically, we don't want
Speaker 2: these blobs of toxic blue green algae that are you know,
Speaker 2: they're they're getting worse almost by the year because climate
Speaker 2: change is warming up the waters, and this stuff loves
Speaker 2: phosphorus and loves loves warmer weather, and they're getting both.
Speaker 2: And they also feast on the extra carbon in the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: So this isn't a problem that's going to go away
Speaker 2: on it's own by any stretch to the imagination.
Speaker 1: Reading about these inexhaustible quote unquote inexhaustible supplies of phosphorus
Speaker 1: in certain areas and then just how rapidly we burned
Speaker 1: through them, it seems like we're not learning that lesson,
Speaker 1: Like over and over again, the same things are happening.
Speaker 1: And maybe this is more of like a philosophical question
Speaker 1: that can't be answered, or the answer is just this
Speaker 1: is what humans do. But why do you think we
Speaker 1: haven't learned the lesson that inexhaustible doesn't really exist.
Speaker 2: Well, because it's been relatively like these deposits, like like
Speaker 2: the bird boop and like the bones and like the manure.
Speaker 2: It just seems like you have an inexhaustible supply, but
Speaker 2: you don't. You know, we're hitting a cap every time
Speaker 2: we think we find something new. I don't know. I
Speaker 2: think it's been because it's been relatively accessible. But those days,
Speaker 2: at least, you know, on our side of the planet,
Speaker 2: are coming to an end. And it's not doom and gloom.
Speaker 2: We're not going to starve to death. The beauty of
Speaker 2: phosphorus is it doesn't go away. It's just like I
Speaker 2: was talking about the cow and the grass and the poop.
Speaker 2: It's just it cycles over and over and over. But
Speaker 2: we're overdosing crop lands to such an extent that it
Speaker 2: just gets flushed off, it doesn't get taken up by
Speaker 2: the crop for which it's intended, and it goes into
Speaker 2: our water. And this is the water problem. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think they're both coming to a head. In two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, I think it was driven largely by
Speaker 2: the ethanol rush, because you know, we started everybody started
Speaker 2: growing corn for fuel. Today forty of the corn we
Speaker 2: grow in the United States goes towards ethanol, and that's
Speaker 2: that's that's a huge demand of phosphorus. But we're coming
Speaker 2: to the point where we're going to have to start
Speaker 2: recognizing the virtuous circle of life that phosphorus stitches together.
Speaker 2: What we did was we took that circle and we
Speaker 2: turned it into a straight line where it runs from
Speaker 2: mind to crop lands to water and along the way.
Speaker 2: You know, it does a lot of damage. We can
Speaker 2: be a lot more intelligent and measured in our application
Speaker 2: of not just uh phosphorus coming from rocks out of
Speaker 2: the ground, but also the phosphorus in the manure of
Speaker 2: you know, the waste stream of the American agriculture system.
Speaker 2: We can engineer. You know, we'll never get to repair
Speaker 2: the true circle of life, but we can we can
Speaker 2: stitch it pretty close together. And doing that, we'll do
Speaker 2: two things. We'll preserve the resources the phosphorus rock deposits
Speaker 2: that we have today, and we'll also protect protect our water.
Speaker 2: You know, you can just google toxic algae and you'll
Speaker 2: see it's it's just ravaging water from Florida to Washington State,
Speaker 2: the Great Lakes and around the world. And that's it's.
Speaker 2: It's a phosphorus problem. We need to keep that phosphorus
Speaker 2: on crop lands and out of the water. And by
Speaker 2: doing that, we won't be burning through it at such
Speaker 2: a reckless and unsustainable pace. We'll also be protecting the
Speaker 2: water that you know, we don't want just to swim in,
Speaker 2: but we want to drink it. Safe water and safe
Speaker 2: abundant food should not be mutually exclusive enterprises. And when
Speaker 2: you start peeling away, you know the situation they are
Speaker 2: and it's because of the misuse of phosphors.
Speaker 1: And I want to get into some of these, like
Speaker 1: the interesting technologies or ideas on the horizon in terms
Speaker 1: of how we can repair this cycle. But I want
Speaker 1: to kind of get back into like where the sources
Speaker 1: of phosphorus pollution are coming from. So I know we've
Speaker 1: talked about agriculture. Are there certain crops or certain farms
Speaker 1: that are that are the biggest defenders when it comes
Speaker 1: to phosphorus pollution or is it just certain areas within
Speaker 1: the US where are the biggest defenders.
Speaker 2: First of all, I don't want to disparage the agriculture
Speaker 2: industry or farmers. You know, there's nothing more noble than
Speaker 2: trying to put food on the table. But they're operating
Speaker 2: in a system that increasingly isn't working for them, and
Speaker 2: it's not working for society in general because they're not
Speaker 2: regulated appropriately. We talked a little bit about this before,
Speaker 2: but when the clean water Act was passed, the farms
Speaker 2: were small, and the manure and the phosphorus that that
Speaker 2: contained was pretty diffuse. But that's not the case anymore.
Speaker 2: So because they're largely unregulated, they can, with impunity, just
Speaker 2: spread this stuff on landscapes. And you know, oftentimes the
Speaker 2: landscape doesn't need more phosphorus and it ends up in
Speaker 2: the water. And so I think one thing that we
Speaker 2: need to think about is reworking the Clean Water Act
Speaker 2: and designating farm waste as you know, a point source
Speaker 2: pollution because if you go to a modern farm and
Speaker 2: you see the size of those souge lagoons, you can't
Speaker 2: help I think that that's a big source and contained
Speaker 2: source of pollution. It is time to, I think, rein
Speaker 2: in the agriculture industry and require that they treat their
Speaker 2: waste like any other industry. And you know, we've got
Speaker 2: a history showing that this works, and it's going to
Speaker 2: cost money, but you know, we're already paying a price
Speaker 2: for the system. For example, you know, milk is relatively cheap,
Speaker 2: but the price that the cash register doesn't reflect the
Speaker 2: true cost. The price true cost is reflected when you
Speaker 2: go to your beach, like in Lake Michigan. I'm picking
Speaker 2: Lake Mendoto over at the University of Wisconsin. I did
Speaker 2: a fair amount of research over there. They've got this
Speaker 2: gorgeous lake right on the edge of the campus, and
Speaker 2: you know, the kids who go to school there now
Speaker 2: don't expect to be able to swim in it because
Speaker 2: it's so polluted with manure from nearby farms, and that
Speaker 2: leads to these toxic algae outbreaks. So we're paying a
Speaker 2: price for failing to regulate adequately right now, whether we
Speaker 2: know it or not. And the thing about proper regulations
Speaker 2: is that regulate, you know, it levels the playing field
Speaker 2: for everybody. So if we do have to pay a
Speaker 2: little bit more for milk, what's the price of having
Speaker 2: a safe water supply worth? And it does jeopardize water supplies.
Speaker 2: Toledo had a toxic algae outbreak in twenty fourteen, driven
Speaker 2: by maneuver overloading that knocked out the drinking water supply
Speaker 2: for half a million people for several days. And it
Speaker 2: was a really scary situation because it wasn't like bacteria
Speaker 2: where you could issue a boil order and everybody would
Speaker 2: be safe if you boiled the water. It just concentrated
Speaker 2: the toxin, so they had to call in the National
Speaker 2: Guard to bring in you know, tankers of water and
Speaker 2: pallettes of baby formula. It was it was bizarre because
Speaker 2: you know, that city of Toledo is on the edge
Speaker 2: of the Great Lakes, which hold twenty percent of the
Speaker 2: world's surface fresh water, and they couldn't safely you know,
Speaker 2: brush their teeth, even with treatment. So that's one thing
Speaker 2: in one industry that we need to think about. Another
Speaker 2: thing I would argue that we need to rethink is
Speaker 2: the whole ethanol enterprise. I just mentioned that about forty
Speaker 2: percent of the corn we produce in the United States
Speaker 2: now ends up in our gas tank. And you know,
Speaker 2: everybody who's looked at this issue who isn't a politician
Speaker 2: or a corn farmer knows that ethanol is just it
Speaker 2: isn't the environmental you know savior that many people pitched
Speaker 2: it and pitched it as it requires huge energy inputs
Speaker 2: and also fertilizer inputs.
Speaker 1: It was a real moment for me when I in
Speaker 1: your book, when you talked about like how presidential you know,
Speaker 1: campaigns are basically started in this place where there's so
Speaker 1: much corn growing, and so it's like a real political
Speaker 1: career killer or just like you know.
Speaker 2: I mean al Gore. Al Gore when he ran for president,
Speaker 2: he pledged the legion staff and all, and you know
Speaker 2: he rules that now and he'll he'll say as much,
Speaker 2: but he said, you know, if you want to if
Speaker 2: you want to be president of the United States, you
Speaker 2: got to do well in Iowa. Because you know, at
Speaker 2: the time it's changed for the Democrats, but that was
Speaker 2: at the front end of the primary season. It still
Speaker 2: is for the Republicans. So if you don't show well
Speaker 2: in Iowa, you don't have a very good shot of
Speaker 2: becoming president. And if you don't, you know, really support
Speaker 2: the ethanol industry, you're not going to show well in Iowa.
Speaker 2: So you know, there are there are some things that
Speaker 2: are relatively simple that we could do to just start
Speaker 2: addressing the problem. And I don't know what it's going
Speaker 2: to take. It just it blows my mind that this
Speaker 2: is just like academics know about this, it's just kind
Speaker 2: of complicated and it's hard to paint the picture for
Speaker 2: people to connect the dots, you know, to show how
Speaker 2: why ore beaches are closed, and why are drinking supplies
Speaker 2: are threatened and why from time to time fertilizer and
Speaker 2: therefore food prices just spike, not just the United States
Speaker 2: but around the world. I mentioned in two thousand and
Speaker 2: eight there were food riots, and that, to me, it's
Speaker 2: kind of a glimpse of what could be. We could
Speaker 2: be headed When I say food riots were they were
Speaker 2: not in the United States, but they were in India
Speaker 2: and Haiti and a number of other places. When so,
Speaker 2: as long as food is relatively cheap, I guess they're
Speaker 2: not going to worry about it. But that's not going
Speaker 2: to be the case forever.
Speaker 1: No, And you know, speaking of like connecting the dots
Speaker 1: and closed beaches, one of the points in your book
Speaker 1: that you talk about is how these algal blooms in
Speaker 1: the Gulf of Mexico that were previously kind of like
Speaker 1: couldn't even imagine that this would happen, and then they
Speaker 1: have started to happen, and sort of tracing the roots
Speaker 1: of those blooms back to the Midwest, can you kind
Speaker 1: of like take us through this downstream how this all
Speaker 1: happened and how these algal blooms really have their roots
Speaker 1: in the Midwest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and and in climate change. So it was
Speaker 2: really interesting. I went to Iowa to the state Fair
Speaker 2: where they have a thing called the Soapbox where all
Speaker 2: the presidential candidates get on the soapbox and tell, you know,
Speaker 2: the people of Iowa what they want to hear. And
Speaker 2: that's both sides, Democrats and Republicans. When I was there
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen, you know Joe Biden, you know, I
Speaker 2: followed him into a bathroom in security that he has
Speaker 2: today and he, you know, told me he supports ethanol,
Speaker 2: and so did you know the Republicans as well. And
Speaker 2: so that was in August. And after that I went
Speaker 2: down the Mississippi River because you know, Iowa was this
Speaker 2: big corn country and at the same time that people
Speaker 2: were campaigning up there in support of ethanol and corn
Speaker 2: growth corn crops, people down in the Gulf of Mexico
Speaker 2: were suffering hugely. And that's because this is where climate
Speaker 2: change comes into the picture. There was I can't remember,
Speaker 2: it wasn't a calendar year, but it was a twelve
Speaker 2: month period that was the wettest twelve months on record
Speaker 2: in the Mississippi River base, which is huge. It spans
Speaker 2: across like forty percent of the United States, but it
Speaker 2: all funnels into you know, basically a narrow channel down
Speaker 2: by New Orleans, and so much fresh water came down
Speaker 2: that system and went out into the Gulf that it
Speaker 2: basically turned the near shore area of the Gulf during
Speaker 2: the summer into fresh water. And that so this toxic
Speaker 2: alga that I've been talking about is primarily a fresh
Speaker 2: water phenomenon, and phosphorus drives fresh water algae blooms. Nitrogen
Speaker 2: is a bigger factor in saltwater when they have different
Speaker 2: types of algae blooms. In that summer, even as the
Speaker 2: presidential candidates were all, you know, loving corn up in Iowa,
Speaker 2: the people down in Mississippi were going out of business
Speaker 2: because so much freshwater hit their coast that it allowed
Speaker 2: for these freshwater algae blooms to take off. And so
Speaker 2: the beaches of Mississippi closed in late June of twenty
Speaker 2: nineteen and stayed closed closed for the whole summer because
Speaker 2: of what was coming down the Mississippi River. It wasn't
Speaker 2: just water, it was excess phosphorus coming off of crop lands,
Speaker 2: so it flowed down. I mean they were getting salinity readings,
Speaker 2: you know, all along Mississippi like it's supposed to be
Speaker 2: at think thirty parts per thousand. I'll probably get the
Speaker 2: order of magnitude off, but they were just like five
Speaker 2: and they should be thirty. And you know it's bordering
Speaker 2: on just you know what you'd expect to not fine. Well,
Speaker 2: it just wasn't typical ocean water, and so they had
Speaker 2: a typical toxic algae outbreaks and that just ruined the
Speaker 2: tourist season. I don't know if you've ever been to
Speaker 2: Mississippi in the summer, but you want to go swimming
Speaker 2: if you're down there, because it's hot. And you know,
Speaker 2: there was forty miles of beach I think twenty seven
Speaker 2: different beaches posted, you know, no swimming, and it was
Speaker 2: because of the pollution coming off the farm fields in
Speaker 2: the Upper Midwest. And I talked to one guy who
Speaker 2: had bought a fleet of jet skis for that summer,
Speaker 2: and by a fleet, I think it was like twenty
Speaker 2: of them or something, and those things are expensive. He
Speaker 2: took out a substantial loan and he couldn't rent them
Speaker 2: out and he was prohibited from doing that, so he
Speaker 2: was when I talked to him, he was just packaging
Speaker 2: him up and sending him to Georgia. It's like a
Speaker 2: fire sales. So he could pay the bank, and he
Speaker 2: said something that really resonated with me. And he's like, look,
Speaker 2: I'm being regulated out of business down here because of
Speaker 2: what's going on up where you live. I said, I
Speaker 2: live in Wisconsin. He said, why aren't you guys regulated?
Speaker 2: You know, why am I paying the price? And these
Speaker 2: are the dots that we got to connect. There's a
Speaker 2: great question and the answer is because we don't have
Speaker 2: the political will. And I think we don't have the
Speaker 2: political will because we don't have an educated public. Now
Speaker 2: I'm realizing what's going on here.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this algae is toxic. What makes it toxic?
Speaker 1: Like what are the health effects on humans? And then
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, part two is what are the
Speaker 1: cascading impacts on ecosystems that these algo blooms have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean, the phosphorus will grow lots of
Speaker 2: aquatic life. But there's a bunch of things that just
Speaker 2: kind of come together here talking about connecting dots. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you're familiar with the zebra and
Speaker 2: quagga muscle infestation of both America's fresh waters, but you know,
Speaker 2: these these little drycenids, these little clam like things came
Speaker 2: from the Caspian Sea basin and the region around that
Speaker 2: via ocean freighters sailing up into the Midwest on the
Speaker 2: Saint Lawrence Seaway. They had all these hitchhikers. And this
Speaker 2: is in the sixties and seventies, and today, you know,
Speaker 2: waters across the country are just you know, infested with
Speaker 2: these tiny little muscles. You don't really see them very often.
Speaker 2: I mean, most times people have any encounter with them,
Speaker 2: it's when they cut their feet on them. But they've
Speaker 2: they've they're just incredibly efficient at filter feeder feeding, and
Speaker 2: they don't have brains, but they're smart enough not to
Speaker 2: eat certain types of algae, toxic algae specifically. So now
Speaker 2: today when we have like in the sixties, Lake Erie
Speaker 2: was green, but it wasn't toxic green because there was
Speaker 2: just a whole assemblage of species that were enhanced by
Speaker 2: the phosphorus coming from detergent. Today, because the muscles have
Speaker 2: just outcompeted everything, when you get an algae bloom, it's
Speaker 2: going to be toxic because that's the one thing they
Speaker 2: don't eat. And so the health effects of this are severe.
Speaker 2: I mean, moderate exposure will just give you a cough,
Speaker 2: and a headache. Significant exposure can cause liver failure. It's
Speaker 2: been implicated in the kid who when swimming on a
Speaker 2: golf course pond here in Wisconsin some years back, and
Speaker 2: he died. And he died because of cute exposure to
Speaker 2: the algae is called microsystis, and the toxin is called
Speaker 2: microsystem and it's a liver toxin. And there's also increasing
Speaker 2: evidence that it's a neurotoxin related to you some pretty
Speaker 2: nasty stuff, including als. So yeah, it's not just a
Speaker 2: matter of icky, unpleasant odors. It's a matter of public health.
Speaker 1: And some people you know, have, as you mentioned in
Speaker 1: your book, started to think about these things in an
Speaker 1: aspect of Okay, how can we come up with innovative
Speaker 1: solutions to try to recapture the phosphorus that we're depositing
Speaker 1: on farms. Can you talk about some of these promising
Speaker 1: areas and especially manure and what we can mine from manure.
Speaker 2: The most promising thing on the horizon is people just
Speaker 2: waking up to the idea that manure is nutritional gold.
Speaker 2: You know, you think about what we were talking earlier
Speaker 2: about the links the British were going to to, you know,
Speaker 2: grow a crop. They would not look at these sewage
Speaker 2: lagoons as a bunch of yuck. They would see it
Speaker 2: as yum. You know, it's like, oh my god, we're
Speaker 2: going to have turnips and wheat, you know, galore. We
Speaker 2: don't see it as that. We see it as a
Speaker 2: waste that has to be spread on the landscape. And
Speaker 2: you know, we all recognize that there's a nutritional value
Speaker 2: to that, but often that that action isn't done to
Speaker 2: you know, neutrify a crops. It's done just to get
Speaker 2: rid of the stuff that's in your limited capacity manure lagoon.
Speaker 2: One of the obstacles right now to getting that manure
Speaker 2: on lands where it's needed rather on lands where it's
Speaker 2: just convenient is figuring out how to concentrate the phosphorus
Speaker 2: in it. And there are technologies to do that where
Speaker 2: you could pelletize it. Right now, most manure is liquefied
Speaker 2: so it can be easily spread. And the rule of
Speaker 2: comb is if a farmer has to move that manure
Speaker 2: more than ten miles, he's losing big money and he's
Speaker 2: not going to do it. But if you develop wastewater
Speaker 2: treatment systems that can pelletize it, now you can put
Speaker 2: it in bags or bins or whatever and move it
Speaker 2: anywhere we're in the country or the world where it's needed.
Speaker 2: It becomes almost the same kind of it is essentially
Speaker 2: the same product coming from a fertilizer factory that's you know,
Speaker 2: using rock based phosphate. So we can do that. It's
Speaker 2: going to cost some money, but you know, it's going
Speaker 2: to cost us a lot if we don't start doing this.
Speaker 2: That's one thing that we need to look at. And
Speaker 2: then I was talking about Hamburg earlier. You know, it's
Speaker 2: where phosphorus was discovered. It was burned to the ground
Speaker 2: and coincidentally, double coincidentally, Hamburg's kind of like putting on
Speaker 2: a clinic for the rest of the world right now.
Speaker 2: And how to deal with phosphorus. Germany's got a law
Speaker 2: that's going to require its major wastewater treatment plants to
Speaker 2: just virtually eliminate any kind of phosphorus discharges. And they're
Speaker 2: significant because phosphorus is in human waste as well as
Speaker 2: animal waste. And they've built a state of the art
Speaker 2: wetewater treatment plant on the banks of the Eld River
Speaker 2: that basically strips all the phosphorus out. And this is
Speaker 2: going to do two things for Germany. It's going to
Speaker 2: help protect their water quality and it's going to give
Speaker 2: them a source of fertilizer that they don't have organically.
Speaker 2: If you will, they don't. You know, Western Europe really
Speaker 2: doesn't have many, if any available phosphorus deposits at the moment.
Speaker 2: So it's a far sighted thing that they're doing, and
Speaker 2: it's something that the rest of the world can learn from.
Speaker 2: We've just got to think of the think of, you know,
Speaker 2: restoring the circle of life. It's really that simple. It's complicated,
Speaker 2: but when it comes down to it, it's that simple
Speaker 2: that you know, stuff that decays is not you know,
Speaker 2: something that's bad, and something that's going to provide life
Speaker 2: for the next the next crop, the next generation of humans.
Speaker 1: Dan, thank you so much for taking the time to
Speaker 1: chat with me. I definitely have a newfound appreciation and
Speaker 1: respect for phosphorus, and I still can't believe that this
Speaker 1: isn't a topic that's covered on every news channel, every day,
Speaker 1: all the time. If you enjoyed this and would like
Speaker 1: to learn more, check out our website this podcast will
Speaker 1: Kill You dot com, or I'll post a link to
Speaker 1: where you can find the Devil's Element Phosphorus and a
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