📗 Libro en inglés PHOSPHORUS

Phosphorus is essential to the production of our food and it also triggers algal blooms in lakes rivers and oceans when it slips through our hands An understanding of this essential resource and how we have used and misused it over the years is crucial to the sustainability of our well being on our planet In this book world authorities on phosphorus sustainability Jim Elser and Phil Haygarth explain this element s involvement in biology human health and nutrition food production ecosystem function and environmental sustainability Phosphorus chronicles the sustainability challenges phosphorus both poses and solves in various contexts The book begins with its discovery over 350 years ago moving to its basic chemistry and the essential role it plays in all living things on Earth Chapters go on to explain the rise in the usage of phosphorus in agriculture and how the increase in the mining of rock phosphate in the mid 20th century was essential for the Green Revolution However phosphorus emissions from human wastes and detergents triggered widespread algal blooms in the 1960s and 1970s While such emissions have been brought under better control with wastewater treatment diffuse emissions from farming continue to cause water quality degradation The autho