Author Jack Lohmann on His New Book White Light, about Phosphorus

AJack Lahman’s promise began to think about phosphorous when he learned the story of Noro, the smallest island country in the world, which is between Australia and Hawaii. In 1899, a geological scientist named Albert Ellis discovered a strange rock that opens a door in a commercial company and farms called the Pacific Islands Company and realized that it was actually high -quality phosphate ore, a very required source after a source of fertilizer. This discovery sparked the phosphate mining rush on the island, which will last more than a century.

Once the coconut lush palm, bread, and vibrant birds are covered, Noro was referred to as the “gentle island” by the first European visitors. But contracts of the mining of the tape have exhausted the island’s supplies of phosphates and destroyed up to 80 percent of the original vegetation, and the population is now suffering from high unemployment, diabetes, obesity and alcohol addiction. The Australian detention camp for asylum seekers is one of the remaining sources of income for the small nation, but the conditions are so dark that the government prevented journalists from visiting and reporting.

In his last year at Princeton University, Lahamman decided to travel to Noro. He was suspected that his position as a student might make it easier for him to slip into the country without anyone noticing it, talking to people, and writing about it. That journey led him to examine history, science and cultural weight of an amazing component: phosphorous. The result is his new eloquent book White Light: The initial role of phosphorous – in our cells, in our food, and in our world.

We talked to Lahamman The spectrum history of phosphate mining and the role of phosphorus in the life cycle and death on this planet.

What made you want to write this book?

I started with Nauru. I wanted to write something covering what was happening in that country. I wanted to communicate the history of mining and deterioration to the present of human rights abuse. While I was writing about it, I kept finding that the field of seeing my vision was expanding. To explain the mining that happened, I felt I needed to go back and explain what is going on with phosphates, where this came from, how everything started. He continued to expand and expand. This is how the book came.

This phosphate, below the surface, is written, carries the power of life itself. What makes this mineral one very strong?

It is necessary for our bodies. It is necessary for our cells. If the plant grows or grows someone, it needs a phosphorus in order to obtain cell membranes, in order to obtain the DNA. There are other elements that we need, including carbon, nitrogen and sulfur, but there is something that attracts a little about phosphorous is that it is rare from all of these. The places that are found also are associated with group events and extinction events, as well as periods of great prosperity. Only in the symbolic or metaphorical sense, it was completely convincing to think about this essential element of life but also causes large amounts of destruction.

You have hundreds of thousands of stuffed cats used to fertilize the fields.

How was phosphate discovered?

The metal and the element are detected somewhat differently. In 1669, the alchemy was trying to find gold, when the phosphorous was isolated. At that time, it was not associated with fertilizers and agriculture. It was this strange element that glowed and then disappeared. It was not until the nineteenth century, as we discovered its metal shape, phosphate, which is the oxygen -related phosphorous, which looks, feels and behaves completely differently from phosphorous on its own. People were thinking about fertilizers for thousands of years, but just about 200 years ago the phosphate itself was described and used directly in its development.

I was surprised by reading that the fertilizer industry at one time sought to obtain the bones of the war. Can you tell me more about this story?

There is a full history of the phosphate industry that is really revised by some strange and ghostly sources. You have companies that go to the battlefields, and go to the Crimea Peninsula for bones. You have shipments of mummies, hundreds of thousands of cats from Egypt returned by the British imperialists and are used to fertilize the fields. You have all the different types of bodies that are recycled. It is a more natural feeling for us when we think of the 18 million -year -old -year -old pulling rocks, although these are still degraded, but surprisingly, they are thrown at a greater comfort when you think about an object that we can still get to know.

What is the importance of the Orthopedic Valley?

Bone Valley is the actual geological name that has been used until recently in this region in the center of Florida between Tampa and Orlando, as the phosphate industry has become really large. Bone Valley is where many phosphate has been deposited long ago in a very easy way for us. Starting in the late nineteenth century, this phosphate was found along a river called the Peace River. There was literally phosphate gravel in the river bed, which was extracted. Over time, people began to realize that there are a lot of phosphate on Earth and throughout the twentieth century, this region grew to become and still is the capital of phosphate mining in the world.

It is still very important and now is the beginning of the decline. Many of that because there was a lot of development in Florida and it is difficult to reach phosphate. The areas that were easy to extract were extracted, and many people could not reach. This is where the phosphate industry has become huge and global and companies.

We live on all these deaths that have accumulated in front of us.

Your book explores some of the ways in which humans disrupted the phosphorous cycle – the movement of phosphorus through the biological ocean, from rocks and soil to cell membranes, which helps to preserve life. But you also write that there are ways – such as changes in agriculture – which can help restore them.

The social solution will include the presence of balanced farms – the way that the farms that were often and are still in many parts of the world. If you have animals and plants together on the farm, you use animal waste to enrich plants and plants in turn help animals. It is a crown. Industrial agriculture, of course, divide those. One of these consequences is that these farms then need the mutant fertilizers because they no longer have natural fertilizers. Then you hear about farms that contain animals only. Suddenly, all their waste poses a threat to health, which makes pathological and polluted rivers. So we separated these farms into two parts, causing problems.

For me, this is a very political story. Currently in Florida, there is a draft law that is transferred through the Legislative Authority to protect phosphate mining companies from certain types of responsibility for leaving radiological waste. There is a language included in the draft law that says phosphate mining is very necessary for agriculture. I really wanted to convey in this book that it is not.

What can phosphorous teach us about life, death and balance between the two?

Life and death are linked. It cannot be separated. When we live, we live in all these deaths that have accumulated in front of us. We need all these decomposing bodies and bits of the material that has been recycled in a thousand different ways over time. If we separate ourselves from that, we harm ourselves. The world has been prepared on this type of dark sessions, but the beautiful, and it is necessary to remember that and build from it.

The leading photo: alchemist from India / Shutterstock

• French Christine

  Spread on March 19, 2025

  French Christine is an editor of a participant in Nutelos.

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