Forget carbon; what's your nitrogen footprint?
Don't have enough to worry about yet? With the attention of the world firmly focused on CFL bulbs, electric cars and the importance of reducing our carbon output, scientists are now warning that "reactive nitrogen" (nitrogen bonded with another element) could be an even bigger threat to the planet.
James Galloway, environmental sciences professor at the U of Virginia and one of the authors of two papers on the subject in the journal Science, says that the accumulation of reactive nitrogen is a little-publicized problem that needs to be addressed as urgently as carbon pollution.
Nitrogen alone is inert and harmless. Reactive nitrogen can be natural or manmade, and is essential for life, which is why it's a principal component in most chemical fertilizers. However, in larger quantities, it can cause problems, and humans are creating more and more of it each year. The most important source is nitrogen fertilizer - widely credited with massive marine "dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere - but it also comes from the burning of biomass and fossil fuels.
Besides wiping out marine life, reactive nitrogen also contributes to smog, climate change and depletion of the ozone layer. And now you know.
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