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Author Jack Lohmann started thinking about phosphorus when he learned the story of Nauru, the world’s smallest island nation, which lies between Australia and Hawaii. In 1899, a geologist named Albert Ellis discovered a strange rock propping open a door at a trading and plantation firm there named the Pacific Islands Company and realized it was in fact high-grade phosphate ore, a highly sought after source of fertilizer. That discovery sparked a phosphate mining rush on the island that would last more than a century.
Once covered in lush coconut palms, breadfruit, and vibrant birds, Nauru was referred to as the “Pleasant Island” by early European visitors. But decades of strip mining have exhausted the island’s supply of phosphate and destroyed up to 80 percent of the original vegetation, and the inhabitants now suffer from high rates of unemployment, diabetes, obesity, and alcoholism. An Australian detention camp for asylum seekers is one remaining source of income for the tiny nation, but conditions are reportedly so dire that the government has banned journalists from visiting and reporting on it.
In his final year at Princeton University, Lohmann decided to travel to Nauru. He suspected that his status as a student might make it easier for him to slip into the country unnoticed, talk to people, and write about it. That trip led him to examine the entire history, science, and cultural weight of a striking element: phosphorus. The result is his eloquent new book White Light: The Elemental Role of Phosphorus—In Our Cells, in Our Food, and in Our World.
We spoke to Lohmann about the spectral history of phosphate mining and the role of phosphorus in the cycle of life and death on this planet.
What made you want to write this book?
It started with Nauru. I wanted to write something that encapsulated what was happening in that country. I wanted to connect the history of mining and degradation to the present of human rights abuse. As I was writing about it, I kept finding that my field of vision was expanding. To explain the mining that happened, I felt I needed to take a step back and explain what was going on with phosphate, where this came from, how it all began. And it kept expanding and expanding. That’s how the book came to be.
You write that phosphate, under the surface, holds the power of life itself. What makes this one mineral so powerful?
It’s necessary for our bodies. It’s necessary for our cells. If a plant grows or a person grows, they need phosphorus in order to have cell membranes, in order to have DNA. There are other elements that we need, including carbon and nitrogen and sulfur, but something that sticks out a bit about phosphorous is that it’s rarer than all of those. The places it’s found are also associated with mass die-offs and extinction events and also periods of great prosperity. Just in a symbolic or metaphorical sense, it was quite compelling to think of this element that is necessary for life but also causes great amounts of destruction.
You have hundreds of thousands of mummified cats used to fertilize fields.
How was phosphate discovered?
The mineral and the element were discovered somewhat differently. In 1669, an alchemist was trying to find gold, and that’s when phosphorus was isolated. At the time, it wasn’t associated with fertilizers and agriculture. It was just this strange element that glowed and then disappeared. It wasn’t until the 1800s that we discovered its mineral form, phosphate, which is phosphorus bonded to oxygen, and which looks and feels and acts quite differently than phosphorus on its own. People had been thinking about fertilizers for thousands of years, but it was only about 200 years ago that phosphate itself was described and used directly in developing them.
I was surprised to read that the fertilizer industry at one time sought out the bones of casualties of war. Can you tell me more about that story?
There’s a whole history of the phosphate industry scavenging from some really strange, ghostly, creepy sources. You have companies going to the battlefields, going to the Crimea to scoop up bones. You have shipments of mummies, hundreds of thousands of mummified cats from Egypt being brought back by British imperialists and ground up and used to fertilize fields. You have all kinds of different bodies being recirculated. It feels a little more natural to us when we think about a phosphate mine that is pulling up rock that’s 18 million years old, even though those are still decomposed bodies, but the strangeness of it is thrown into greater relief when you think about a body that we can still recognize.
What is the significance of Bone Valley?
Bone Valley is the actual geological name that was used until pretty recently for this region in central Florida between Tampa and Orlando, where the phosphate industry became really big. Bone Valley is a place where a lot of phosphate was deposited a long time ago in a way that is pretty easy for us to access. Beginning in the late 1800s, this phosphate was found along a river called the Peace River. There were literally phosphate pebbles in the bed of the river, which were mined. Over time, people began to realize there was a lot of phosphate in the ground and throughout the 20th century, this area grew to become and still is the phosphate mining capital of the world.
It’s still hugely significant and only now is the beginning to decline. Much of that is because there’s been a lot of development in Florida and it’s hard to access the phosphate. The areas that were easy to mine have been mined, and there isn’t so much left that people can get to. This is the place where the phosphate industry became huge and global and corporate.
We’re living on all of these deaths that have accumulated before us.
Your book explores some of the ways that humans have disrupted the phosphorus cycle—the movement of phosphorus through the biosphere, from rock and soil to cell membranes, which helps to sustain life. But you also write that there are ways—such as changes to agriculture—that could help to restore it.
A social solution would involve having farms that are balanced—the way farms often used to be and still are in many parts of the world. If you have animals and plants together on a farm, you use the waste of the animals to fertilize the plants and plants in turn help the animals. It’s symbiotic. Industrial agriculture, of course, splits those. One of those consequences is that these farms then need mined fertilizers because they no longer have the natural fertilizers. And then you hear about the farms that have only animals on them. Suddenly all their waste is a health hazard, making people sick and polluting rivers. So we’ve separated these farms into two parts, which causes problems.
To me, this is a very political story. Right now in Florida, there’s a bill being moved through the legislature to shield phosphate mining companies from certain kinds of liability for leaving behind radiological waste. And there is language inserted into the bill that says phosphate mining is absolutely necessary for agriculture. I really wanted to convey in this book that it’s not.
What can phosphorus teach us about life and death and the balance between the two?
Life and death are related. They can’t be separated. When we live, we’re living on all of these deaths that have accumulated before us. We need all of these decomposed bodies and bits of matter that’s been recycled in a thousand different ways over time. If we separate ourselves from that, we’re hurting ourselves. The world is set up on these kind of dark, but beautiful cycles, and it’s necessary to remember that and to build off of it. 
Lead image: Alchemist from India / Shutterstock
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