America’s Most Common Drug Ingredient Could Be Making You Less Empathetic -- Every week, a quarter of Americans take a painkiller that could be dampening our collective feelings of empathy. In a paper published online this week, scientists claim that acetaminophen, Tylenol’s main ingredient, makes people more likely to think that other people’s pain isn’t a big deal. Researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Ohio State University published their findings in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience after studying the effects of the drug on between 80 and about 120 college students across three different experiments. One group of students drank a liquid with 1,000 mg of acetaminophen, while another took a placebo. An hour later, everyone read short stories about situations such as feeling emotional pain from the death of a parent, or physical pain from a knife that had cut through to the bone. The students who drank the acetaminophen assigned lower ratings for perceived pain and distress than the students who didn’t. In the second experiment, participants socialized with other people and then, while alone, watched a game supposedly involving three of the people they had just met. The game showed two people excluding the third from an activity, and asked students to rate how hurt the excluded member was. Again, students who took the painkiller assigned lower pain ratings. Given how common acetaminophen is (it’s present in more than 600 products) it’s worth looking into what the researchers have called its “broader social side effects” and whether other painkillers could have similar results.
Zika Virus May Spread To Europe In Coming Months, WHO Warns: The Zika virus, an infectious disease linked to severe birth defects in babies, may spread into Europe as the weather gets warmer, although the risk is low, health officials said on Wednesday. In its first assessment of the threat Zika poses to the region, the World Health Organization's European office said the overall risk was small to moderate. It is highest in areas where Aedes mosquitoes thrive, in particular on the island of Madeira and the north-eastern coast of the Black Sea. "There is a risk of spread of Zika virus disease in the European Region and ... this risk varies from country to country, said Zsuzsanna Jakab, the WHO's regional director for Europe. "We call particularly on countries at higher risk to strengthen their national capacities and prioritize the activities that will prevent a large Zika outbreak." The WHO's European region covers 53 countries and a population of nearly 900 million. It stretches from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Mediterranean Sea in the south and from the Atlantic in the west to the Pacific in the east. A large and spreading outbreak of Zika that began in Brazil has caused global alarm. The virus has been linked to thousands of cases of a birth defect known as microcephaly in babies of women who become infected with Zika while pregnant. The WHO has said there is strong scientific consensus that Zika can also cause Guillain-Barre, a rare neurological syndrome that causes temporary paralysis in adults. The WHO's Geneva headquarters in February declared the Zika outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), warning it was spreading "explosively" in the Americas.
Antibiotics will stop working at a 'terrible human cost', major report warns -- Urgent action is needed to control the use of antibiotics before they cease to work, leaving a number of major conditions untreatable and causing “terrible human and economic cost”, a major study has warned.Resistance to antibiotics is growing at such an alarming rate that they risk losing effectiveness entirely meaning medical procedures such as caesarean sections, joint replacements and chemotherapy could soon become too dangerous to perform. Unless urgent action is taken, drug resistant infections will kill 10 million people a year by 2050, more than cancer kills currently, the report’s authors warn. Drug resistant infections are thought to be growing due to over-use of medicine such as antibiotics and anti-fungus treatments to treat minor conditions such as the common cold. With over-use, resistance to the drugs builds up meaning some conditions become incurable and so-called ‘superbugs’ such as MRSA develop.Research has also suggested that antibiotic use in pig farming is common as poor living conditions mean such treatment is necessary to prevent infections spreading between livestock and that this passes down to humans through pork consumption, increasing resistance levels further. In the UK, 45 per cent of all antibiotics are given to livestock. It calls for urgent action to halt the growing use of antibiotics: “to avoid the terrible human and economic costs of resistance that the world would otherwise face.” Among his recommendations, Lord O’Neill calls for a public awareness campaign on the harms of antibiotic use, for restrictions to be placed on the use of some critical antibiotics and a tax on the drugs to be introduced for livestock use.
The Plan to Avert Our Post-Antibiotic Apocalypse -- Under instructions from U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, economist Jim O’Neill has spent the last two years looking into the problem of drug-resistant infections—bacteria and other microbes that have become impervious to antibiotics. In that time, he estimates that a million people have died from such infections. By 2050, he thinks that ten million will die every year. A former chairman of Goldman Sachs with no scientific training, he was an unorthodox choice to lead an international commission on drug-resistant infections. He was also an inspired one. The problem of drug-resistant microbes isn’t just about biology and chemistry; it’s an economic problem at heart, a catastrophic and long-bubbling mismatch between supply and demand. It’s the result of the many incentives for misusing our drugs, and the dearth of incentives for developing new ones. The scope of that problem is clear in O’Neill’s final report, which launches today on the back of eight earlier interim publications. It is as thorough a review of the problem of drug-resistant infections as currently exists. “They’ve been extremely open-minded, and have sought opinion extensively across the world,” The report’s language is sober but its numbers are apocalyptic. If antibiotics continue to lose their sting, resistant infections will sap $100 trillion from the world economy between now and 2050, equivalent to $10,000 for every person alive today. Ten million people will die every year, roughly one every three seconds, and more than currently die from cancer. And yet, resistance is not futile. O’Neill’s report includes ten steps to avert the crisis. Notably, only two address the problem of supply—the lack of new antibiotics. Indeed, seven of his recommendations focus on reducing the wanton and wasteful use of our existing arsenal. It’s inevitable that microbes will evolve resistance, but we can delay that process by using drugs more sparingly.
World Bank launches $500 million insurance fund to fight pandemics | Reuters: The World Bank on Saturday said it was launching a $500 million, fast-disbursing insurance fund to combat deadly pandemics in poor countries, creating the world's first insurance market for pandemic risk. Japan has committed the first $50 million towards the facility, which will combine funding from reinsurance markets with the proceeds of a new type of World Bank-issued high-yield pandemic “catastrophe” bond, the bank said. In the event of a pandemic outbreak, the facility will release funds quickly to affected poor countries and qualified international first-responder agencies. The genesis of the new facility was the slow international response to the Ebola outbreak in 2014, when it took months to muster meaningful funds for affected countries as death tolls mounted. "The recent Ebola crisis in West Africa was a tragedy that we were simply not prepared for. It was a wake-up call to the world,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim told a media conference call. “We can’t change the speed of a hurricane or the magnitude of an earthquake, but we can change the trajectory of an outbreak. With enough money sent to the right place at the right time, we can save lives and protect economies,” Kim added. The so-called Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility will initially provide up to $500 million that can be disbursed quickly to fight a pandemic, with funds released once parametric triggers are met, based on the size, severity and spread of an outbreak. The facility was developed in conjunction with the World Health Organization and reinsurers Swiss Re and Munich Re, which are acting as insurance providers. It will include catastrophe, or cat bonds, in which purchasers would lose principal if fund flows are triggered by a pandemic outbreak, the World Bank said.
The ‘Sell By’ Dates On Our Groceries Are Causing Tons Of Food Waste -- The food labeling system in the United States is a complete mess. Foods can be labeled “healthy” regardless of how much sugar they contain. Foods can be labeled “Non-GMO” even when they don’t have genes, making the existence of a genetically-modified version impossible. But beyond encouraging misinformation in our food system and potentially leading consumers to make ill-informed nutritional decisions, labels can also be terrible for the environment and food security. Take, for instance, the existence of omnipresent expiration labels. Most consumers assume that these labels are guidelines for the date after which it’s unwise, or potentially unsafe, to eat that particular food product. But expiration labels basically mean nothing. There are no federal standards for expiration dates, except for baby formula, and best-by or sell-by date have no basis in science — instead, they’re a manufacturer’s best guess for when the food is likely to be freshest, or at peak quality. Some food products could easily last a year or a year and a half past their “sell by” date. A lot of American consumers don’t know that, however, which leads to confusion over expiration labels and, in turn, causes Americans to throw out a lot of perfectly good food. A recent study from the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, and the National Consumers League, which surveyed over 1,000 American consumers, found that a third of consumers believe that expiration labels are federally regulated. The study also found that more than than a third of consumers consistently throw away food that is close to or past its labeled expiration date, and 84 percent do it at least occasionally.
Should Parents Be Worried About Nanoparticles in Baby Formula? -- There’s a lot of stuff you’d expect to find in baby formula: proteins, carbs, vitamins, essential minerals. But parents probably wouldn’t anticipate finding extremely small, needle-like particles. Yet this is exactly what a team of scientists here at Arizona State University (ASU) recently discovered. The research, commissioned and published by Friends of the Earth—an environmental advocacy group—analyzed six commonly available off-the-shelf baby formulas (liquid and powder) and found nanometer-scale needle-like particles in three of them. The particles were made of hydroxyapatite—a poorly soluble calcium-rich mineral. Manufacturers use it to regulate acidity in some foods, and it’s also available as a dietary supplement. Looking at these particles at super-high magnification, it’s hard not to feel a little anxious about feeding them to a baby. They appear sharp and dangerous—not the sort of thing that has any place around infants. And they are “nanoparticles”—a family of ultra-small particles that have been raising safety concerns within the scientific community and elsewhere for some years. For all these reasons, questions like “should infants be ingesting them?” make a lot of sense. However, as is so often the case, the answers are not quite so straightforward.
Scientists Talk Privately About Creating a Synthetic Human Genome - The New York Times: Scientists are now contemplating the fabrication of a human genome, meaning they would use chemicals to manufacture all the DNA contained in human chromosomes.The prospect is spurring both intrigue and concern in the life sciences community because it might be possible, such as through cloning, to use a synthetic genome to create human beings without biological parents.While the project is still in the idea phase, and also involves efforts to improve DNA synthesis in general, it was discussed at a closed-door meeting on Tuesday at Harvard Medical School in Boston. The nearly 150 attendees were told not to contact the news media or to post on Twitter during the meeting.Organizers said the project could have a big scientific payoff and would be a follow-up to the original Human Genome Project, which was aimed at reading the sequence of the three billion chemical letters in the DNA blueprint of human life. The new project, by contrast, would involve not reading, but rather writing the human genome — synthesizing all three billion units from chemicals.But such an attempt would raise numerous ethical issues. Could scientists create humans with certain kinds of traits, perhaps people born and bred to be soldiers? Or might it be possible to make copies of specific people?
Austin, Indiana: the HIV capital of small-town America - Darren was 13 when he started taking pills, which he claims were given to him by an adult relative. “He used to feed them to me,” Darren said. On fishing trips, they’d get high together. Jessica and Darren have never known a life of family dinners, board games and summer vacations. “This right here is normal to us,” Darren told me. He sat in a burgundy recliner, scratching at his arms and pulling the leg rest up and down. Their house was in better shape than many others I’d seen, but nothing in it was theirs. Their bedrooms were bare. The kind of multigenerational drug use he was describing was not uncommon in their town, Austin, in southern Indiana. It’s a tiny place, covering just two and a half square miles of the sliver of land that comprises Scott County. An incredible proportion of its 4,100 population – up to an estimated 500 people – are shooting up. It was here, starting in December 2014, that the single largest HIV outbreak in US history took place. Austin went from having no more than three cases per year to 180 in 2015, a prevalence rate close to that seen in sub-Saharan Africa. Exactly how this appalling human crisis happened here, in this particular town, has not been fully explained. I’d arrived in Scott County a week previously to find Austin not exactly desolate. Main Street had a few open businesses, including two pharmacies and a used-goods store, owned by a local police sergeant. In the streets either side of it, though, modest ranch houses were interspersed among shacks and mobile homes. Some lawns were well-tended, but many more were not. On some streets, every other house had a warning sign: ‘No Trespassing’, ‘Private Property’, ‘Keep Out’. Sheets served as window curtains. . Others had porches filled with junk – washing machines, furniture, toys, stacks of old magazines. There were no sidewalks. Teenage and twenty-something girls walked the streets selling sex. I watched a young girl in a puffy silver coat get into a car with a grey-haired man. Driving around for days, knocking on doors looking for drug users who would speak with me was intimidating. I’ve never felt more scared than I did in Austin.
Nebraska Farmers Sue Monsanto Alleging Roundup Gave Them Cancer -- Four Nebraskan agricultural workers have filed a lawsuit against Monsanto Co. alleging that the agribusiness giant’s cancer-linked product, Roundup, gave them non-Hodgkin lymphoma after many years of exposure. The plaintiffs have also accused Monsanto of purposely misleading consumers about the safety of its blockbuster product, which contains glyphosate as its controversial main ingredient. The plaintiffs allege that Monsanto mislabeled the product in defiance of the “body of recognized scientific evidence linking the disease to exposure to Roundup.” Glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the world was infamously classified as “probably carcinogenic to humans” by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in March 2015. “Case-control studies of occupational exposure in the USA, Canada, and Sweden reported increased risks for non-Hodgkin lymphoma that persisted after adjustment for other pesticides,” the IARC said about the herbicide, adding that there is also “convincing evidence” that it can cause cancer in laboratory animals. “Roundup is used by Nebraskans raising everything from grain to grass and tulips to trees. Nothing on the label alerts users to health risks,” their attorney David Domina told Courthouse News. He said that Nebraskans deserve the benefit of the WHO’s research and protection against unknown exposure.
New Evidence About the Dangers of Monsanto's Roundup - John Sanders worked in the orange and grapefruit groves in Redlands, California, for more than 30 years. First as a ranch hand, then as a farm worker, he was responsible for keeping the weeds around the citrus trees in check. Roundup, the Monsanto weed killer, was his weapon of choice, and he sprayed it on the plants from a hand-held atomizer year-round. Frank Tanner, who owned a landscaping business, is also a Californian and former Roundup user. Tanner relied on the herbicide starting in 1974, and between 2000 and 2006 sprayed between 50 and 70 gallons of it a year, sometimes from a backpack, other times from a 200-gallon drum that he rolled on a cart next to him. The two men have other things in common, too: After being regularly exposed to Roundup, both developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer that starts in the lymph cells. And, as of April, both are plaintiffs in a suit filed against Monsanto that marks a turning point in the pitched battle over the most widely used agricultural chemical in history. Until recently, the fight over Roundup has mostly focused on its active ingredient, glyphosate. But mounting evidence, including one study published in February, shows it’s not only glyphosate that’s dangerous, but also chemicals listed as “inert ingredients” in some formulations of Roundup and other glyphosate-based weed killers. Though they have been in herbicides — and our environment — for decades, these chemicals have evaded scientific scrutiny and regulation in large part because the companies that make and use them have concealed their identity as trade secrets. Now, as environmental scientists have begun to puzzle out the mysterious chemicals sold along with glyphosate, evidence that these so-called inert ingredients are harmful has begun to hit U.S. courts. In addition to Sanders and Tanner, at least four people who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after using Roundup have sued Monsanto in recent months, citing the dangers of both glyphosate and the co-formulants sold with it.
UN Says Glyphosate ‘Unlikely’ to Cause Cancer, Industry Ties to Report Called Into Question --Does glyphosate cause cancer or not? A new joint report from experts at the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR) has concluded that the controversial chemical is “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet.” The new review appears to contradict the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which concluded in March 2015 that glyphosate “probably” causes cancer in humans. So is there a mixup between the two bodies? In a Q&A issued alongside the new report, the WHO acknowledged that the conclusions arrived at by the IARC and the FAO/JMPR were “different, yet complementary.” The IARC assessed glyphosate as a “hazard” while the joint group looked at “risk.” The WHO said that while the “IARC reviews published studies to identify potential cancer hazards, it does not estimate the level of risk to the population associated with exposure to the hazard.” On the other hand, the JMPR “conducts an evaluation or a re-evaluation of the safety of that chemical as it is used in agriculture and occurs in food.” Wired further explained the differences between the two assessments: The IARC studies whether chemicals can cause cancer under any possible situation—realistic or not—while the joint meeting’s report looks at whether glyphosate can cause cancer in real-life conditions, like if you eat cereal every morning made from corn treated with glyphosate. One of these reports is, by design, much more relevant to your life than the other. The IARC is also, by design, not supposed to make recommendations to the public. It assesses “hazard,” which in scientific jargon, means something very different than “risk.”
EU Delays Approval of Glyphosate, Again -- A decision on whether or not to re-approve the controversial toxic substance glyphosate for use in Europe was postponed Thursday for the second time, following disagreement among representatives of EU governments. A revised proposal by the European Commission to re-approve glyphosate for use in Europe for nine more years, with almost no restrictions, failed to secure the required majority among EU governments. The decision was due to be taken by representatives of EU governments in the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed. The proposal by the European Commission to approve glyphosate for 9 more years, with no restrictions on its use, would have to have been approved by a qualified majority of member states. It is not yet clear when the next meeting of the committee will take place, but the commission can now either present a new proposal or propose a technical extension for a shorter timeframe (e.g. 2 years). Bart Staes, Green environment and food safety spokesperson, had this to say about the decision: “This latest postponement is a sign that the significant opposition to re-approving glyphosate is being taken seriously by key EU governments. It is clear that the EU Commission and the agro-chemical industry were hell-bent on bulldozing through the approval of glyphosate for unrestricted use for a long timeframe but thankfully this push has been headed off for now. We hope this postponement will convince more EU governments to join in opposing the approval of this controversial substance and, at the very least, to proactively propose comprehensive restrictions on its use.“
Poison Sector Concentration: Monsanto May Get Bought -- In my January piece on agrochemical sector concentration I mentioned that Monsanto’s last chance for a merger may be with BASF. Now the business press is percolating with talk of either BASF or Bayer buying Monsanto outright. Both companies have herbicide portfolios not dependent on glyphosate. Bayer also has extensive seed company holdings, while BASF has little in that way. All the talk reinforces the perception that Monsanto’s Roundup business is seen as having a highly questionable future and that the only thing which might really interest anyone is the company’s potential to develop GM traits other than those based on glyphosate, along with the germplasm holdings among the seed companies Monsanto owns. The specter of “monopoly” always touted in these connections by the corporate media and government is a misdirection ploy. The sector already has monopolies on pesticides and GM seeds, and the handful of companies in an oligopoly sector almost never compete on price, product quality, or anything else which might benefit customers or the public. Rather, they compete for market share through advertising and government lobbying. So a BASF/Monsanto or Dow/DuPont merger is unlikely to make any difference for industrial farmers. Anyone who actually cared about the evils of monopoly would target the sector as the monolithic whole it is, not fret over cosmetic mergers within the sector. We can expect that any reconfigured entity will try to make the Monsanto name go away in the same way that Monsanto’s former contractor Blackwater changed its name to “Xe”. Whatever cosmetic changes are made including in the name, we must still keep calling it Monsanto.
Genetically modified salmon approved for consumption in Canada - Health Canada has approved genetically modified salmon as safe for consumption, allowing for the first time genetically altered animals on Canadian grocery store shelves. The federal agency’s decision Thursday follows a decades-long fight by AquaBounty Technologies, a company with roots in Canada, to sell its product in North America. The decision was met with fierce opposition by environmental groups who question the safety of the product and who say the approval opens the door to other genetically engineered animals. Health Canada said Thursday its scientists conducted “a thorough analysis” of AquAdvantage, AquaBounty’s brand of genetically modified salmon. By introducing a growth hormone gene from Chinook salmon, the company is able to grow Atlantic salmon to market size in half the amount of time – from about 40 months down to 20. “In every other way, the AquAdvantage salmon is identical to other farmed salmon,” the agency said in a statement. “Following this assessment, it was determined that the changes made to the salmon did not pose a greater risk to human health than salmon currently available on the Canadian market.” The fish will not need to be labelled as genetically modified. In Canada, such labels are required only in cases where the food poses a health risk, or if nutritional qualities have been significantly changed. The United States Food and Drug Administration made a similar decision to allow the sale of AquAdvantage last year.
National Research Council GMO Study Compromised by Industry Ties -- One day before the National Research Council (NRC) is scheduled to release a multi-year research report about genetically engineered (GMO) crops and food, Food & Water Watch has released an issue brief detailing the far-reaching conflicts of interest at the NRC and its parent organization, the National Academy of Sciences. Under the Influence: The National Research Council and GMOs charts the millions of dollars in donations the NRC receives from biotech companies like Monsanto, documents the one-sided panels of scientists the NRC enlists to carry out its GMO studies and describes the revolving door of NRC staff directors who shuffle in and out of agriculture and biotech industry groups. The new issue brief also shows how NRC routinely arrives at watered-down scientific conclusions on agricultural issues based on industry science. While companies like Monsanto and its academic partners are heavily involved in the NRC’s work on GMOs, critics have long been marginalized. Many groups have called on the NRC many times to reduce industry influence, noting how conflicts of interest clearly diminish its independence and scientific integrity. More than half of the invited authors of the new NRC study are involved in GMO development or promotion or have ties to the biotechnology industry—some have consulted for or have received research funding from, biotech companies. NRC has not publicly disclosed these conflicts.
Big Ag Fights to the Bitter End to Keep Pesticide From Being Banned - After years of debate, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is finally poised to revoke all uses of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which first came online as a pest control technology in 1965. That action, which could come this year, follows years of accumulating evidence that the organophosphate pesticide poses significant risks to people’s health and the environment. But Big Ag isn’t giving up on chlorpyrifos yet. Marketed by Dow Agrosciences under the names Lorsban and Dursban, chlorpyrifos was once widely used to battle insects in homes, gardens and lawns as well as in agriculture. In June 2000, however, the company agreed to stop selling it for household uses because of the health risks it posed to children. But its agreement with the EPA did not extend to conventional agriculture, where chlorpyrifos is still widely used today. Research has linked the pesticide to nervous system damage, behavioral problems and lower IQ in young children whose mothers were exposed during pregnancy. In adults, low-level exposure to chlorpyrifos can cause nausea, headaches and dizziness and farmworkers or others who experienced severe exposures have suffered vomiting, muscle cramps, diarrhea, blurred vision, loss of consciousness and even paralysis. In its latest round of pesticide residue tests on fruits and veggies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture detected residues of chlorpyrifos on some samples of fruits and veggies children often eat, including peaches and nectarines. The EPA’s final ruling to revoke all uses of chlorpyrifos in agriculture, which has been years in the making, still has Big Ag in a twist, which was on display last month at a hearing of the House Agriculture Committee’s subcommittee on Biotechnology, Horticulture and Research.
Farms Are A Major Global Source Of Air Pollution -- At the beginning of the 20th century, two German chemists — Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch — figured out a way to produce ammonia cheaply, and on an industrial scale. Without their process, it’s estimated that about 40 percent of the human population would not be alive today. But the use of widely-available fertilizer has also come with some considerable downsides. Fertilizer runoff making its way into streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans has contributed to algal blooms and oxygen-free “dead zones” across the United States, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. In Iowa, the Des Moines Water Works utility filed a federal lawsuit against three farm counties, claiming that the filtration technology required to strip the drinking water of nitrates from excess fertilizer runoff costs the utility between $4,000 and $7,000 a day. And it’s not just the water that is being polluted by fertilizer use. A new study published in Geophysical Research Letters found that fertilizer use — as well as animal agriculture — is a significant contributor to air pollution worldwide. Susanne Bauer, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University’s Center for Climate Systems Research and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told ThinkProgress that she was interested in looking at agricultural air pollution because, unlike car pollution or pollution from combustion engines, it’s a sector that has not been looked at closely, especially on a global scale. Yet with a growing global population, agricultural air pollution — in the form of ammonia from fertilizer and livestock waste — is expected to increase, as farmers race to keep up with the growing demand for food. “In this study, we wanted to shine a light on a sector that is not talked about a lot,” she said. “Nobody wants to criticize food production, but we need to think about how we produce food.”
A Chemical Reaction Revolutionized Farming 100 Years Ago. Now It Needs to Go --OF ALL THE elements that make up Earth’s atmosphere, nitrogen is by far the most abundant. It is also one of the most inert. Nothing happens when you breathe it in, swallow it, or let it suffuse your skin. Nitrogen gas likes to stay nitrogen gas. But in the early 20th century, two German chemists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, figured out how to pluck fertilizer from thin air by making ammonia (NH3) out of nitrogen gas (N2). You need energy, lots of it. The Haber-Bosch process relied and still relies on high temperature, high pressure, and hydrogen atoms ripped from fossil fuels. Ammonia from this process fertilizes crops, which in turn nourish you. On average, half the nitrogen in your cells might come from Haber-Bosch. “The Haber-Bosch process is one of the most important for humanity,” says Mercouri Kanatzidis, a chemist at Northwestern University. But what seemed ingenious a hundred years ago is running into problems in 2016. The Haber-Bosch process burns natural gas (3 percent of the world’s production) and releases loads of carbon (3 percent of the world’s carbon emissions). If relying on fossil fuels to give the world electricity and heat is unsustainable, so is relying on fossil fuels to grow its food. So interest in a Haber-Bosch alternative is heating up. Last month, the Department of Energy issued a funding opportunity announcement for a sustainable way to make ammonia. The challenge isn’t just making ammonia without fossil fuels—scientists can already do that—but to do it at a scale and price that can compete with an industrial process perfected over a hundred years. And that ultimately might take more than just a technological breakthrough.
How to Reclaim Nitrogen Back as a Life-giving Nutrient -- Coastal dead zones, global warming, excess algae blooms, acid rain, ocean acidification, smog, impaired drinking water quality, an expanding ozone hole and biodiversity loss. Seemingly diverse problems, but a common thread connects them: human disruption of how a single chemical element, nitrogen, interacts with the environment. Nitrogen is absolutely crucial to life — an indispensable ingredient of DNA, proteins and essentially all living tissue — yet it also can choke the life out of aquatic ecosystems, destroy trees and sicken people when it shows up in excess at the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong form. And over the past century, people have released so much of this type of nitrogen — known as reactive nitrogen — that scientists say we’ve passed the limit of what the planet can safely handle. The result of releasing so much nitrogen to the environment — through excessive and inefficient fertilizer use, agriculture-related nitrogen emissions and nutrient-laden wastewater, along with fossil fuel and biomass burning — is this slew of adverse environmental impacts. These impacts are occurring worldwide and are exacerbated by warming temperatures. Though the nitrogen problem gets far less press, we’ve now upset the naturally occurring balance of nitrogen even more than that of carbon. While many things contribute to the problem — including energy use, urban runoff and sewage — agriculture is the largest source of environmentally damaging nitrogen. According to scientists studying this problem, approximately 80 percent of the nitrogen currently used in agriculture (primarily synthetic and other fertilizers, like manure) is lost to the environment at some point in the food supply chain. These losses occur on farms and in food production, sales, distribution, preparation and consumption.
World Farmers Need to Do More to Stop Catastrophic Climate Change -- The world’s farmers and food producers must do more—perhaps five times as much—to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that threaten catastrophic global climate change, according to new research. Right now, scientists calculate that the options available to meet the recent Paris agreement to limit global warming to a maximum of 2 C above historic levels would deliver at most 40 percent and at the lowest estimate 21 percent, of the mitigation necessary. That means that cattlemen, rice farmers, shepherds, growers and livestock managers of all kinds must somehow achieve reductions in methane and oxides of nitrogen equivalent to a billion tons of carbon dioxide each year by 2030. Carbon dioxide is the principal greenhouse gas, but although the others are released in much lower quantities and linger in the atmosphere for a much shorter span, they are also many times more potent in terms of the greenhouse effect. This new look at the challenge ahead for the world’s food producers, published in Global Change Biology journal, is the outcome of a co-operation between scientists from 22 institutes or laboratories of global distinction. These include the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centres, the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the Internati