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Scientists warn of ‘phosphogeddon’ as critical fertiliser
shortages loom
Mar 12, 2023
By Robin
McKie,
Science editor
![](images/images_03_14_2023/Pic1.jpg)
The overuse of phosphorus is creating algal blooms such as
the one in the Baltic Sea near Stockholm in Sweden. Photograph:
TT News Agency/Reuters
Excessive use of phosphorus is depleting reserves
vital to global food production, while also adding to the climate crisis
Our planet faces “phosphogeddon”, scientists have warned. They fear
our misuse of phosphorus could lead to deadly shortages of fertilisers
that would disrupt global food production.
At the same time, phosphate fertiliser washed from fields –
together with sewage inputs into rivers, lakes and seas – is giving rise
to widespread algal blooms and creating aquatic dead zones that threaten
fish stocks.
In addition, overuse of the element is increasing releases of
methane across the planet, adding to global heating and the climate crisis
caused by carbon emissions, researchers have warned.
“We have reached a critical turning point,” said Prof Phil Haygarth
of Lancaster University. “We might be able to turn back but we have really
got to pull ourselves together and be an awful lot smarter in the way we
use phosphorus. If we don’t, we face a calamity that we have termed ‘phosphogeddon’.”
Phosphorus was discovered in 1669 by the German scientist Hennig
Brandt, who isolated it from urine, and it has since been shown to be
essential to life. Bones and teeth are largely made of the mineral calcium
phosphate – a compound derived from it – while the element also provides
DNA with its sugar phosphate backbone.
“To put it simply, there is no life on Earth without phosphorus,”
exlpained Prof Penny Johnes of Bristol University.
The element’s global importance lies in its use to help crop
growth. About 50m tonnes of phosphate fertiliser are sold around the world
every year, and these supplies play a crucial role in feeding the planet’s
8 billion inhabitants.
However, significant deposits of phosphorus are found in only a few
countries: Morocco and western Sahara have the largest amount, China the
second biggest deposit and Algeria the third. In contrast, reserves in the
US are down to 1% of previous levels, while Britain has always had to rely
on imports. “Traditional rock phosphate reserves are relatively rare and
have become depleted in line with their extraction for fertiliser
production,” added Johnes.
This growing strain on stocks has raised fears the world will reach
“peak phosphorus” in a few years. Supplies will then decline, leaving many
nations struggling to obtain enough to feed their people.
The prospect concerns many analysts, who worry that a few cartels
could soon control most of the world’s supplies and leave the west highly
vulnerable to soaring prices. The result would be the phosphate equivalent
of the oil crisis of the 1970s.
The predicament was once summed up by the science fiction writer
Isaac Asimov: “Life can multiply until all the phosphorus is gone and then
there is an inexorable halt which nothing can prevent.”
These dangers were also highlighted last week with the publication
in the US of The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance,
by the environment writer Dan Egan. The book has yet to be published in
the UK but it mirrors concerns recently raised by British scientists.
They say we have become profligate in the use of phosphates we put
on our fields. Fertiliser washed from them – and discharges of
phosphorus-rich effluent – have triggered large-scale contamination of
water and created harmful algal blooms. Some of the world’s biggest bodies
of freshwater are now afflicted, including Russia’s Lake Baikal, Lake
Victoria in Africa and North America’s Lake Erie. Blooms at Erie have led
to poisoning of local drinking water in recent years.
“Just as they do on land, phosphates help aquatic plants to grow,”
said Haygarth, who is the co-author of Phosphorus: Past and Future. “And
that is now having calamitous consequences in rivers, lakes and
seas.”Choked by blooms, many of these bodies of water have become dead
zones, where few creatures survive and which are expanding. One dead zone
now forms in the Gulf of Mexico every summer, for example.
Such crises also create other environmental problems. “Climate
change means we will get more algal blooms per unit of phosphate pollution
because of the warmer conditions,” said Prof Bryan Spears of the UK Centre
for Ecology & Hydrology in Midlothian.
“The problem is that when that algae dies, it can
decay to produce methane. So a rise in blooms will mean more methane will
be pumped into the atmosphere – and methane is 80 times more potent than
carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere. It is a cause for real concern.”
Spears led a team, which included Haygarth and Johnes, that wrote a recent
report, Our Phosphorus Future, in which they outline the measures needed
to head off our impending crisis. These include improving ways to recycle
phosphorus and to ensure there is a global shift to healthy diets with low
phosphorus footprints.
The global spread of the element reveals how profoundly humanity is
now shaping the makeup of our planet, added Johnes. “In one case, we dig
up ancient carbon deposits of coal, oil and gas, burn them and so pump
billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, triggering
climate change.
“With phosphorus, we are also mining mineral reserves but in this
case we are turning them into fertiliser which is washed into rivers and
seas where they are triggering algal blooms. In both cases these grand
translocations are causing planetary havoc.”
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