“There would be no life without constant death.” That’s the opening line from Jack Lohmann’s new book, "White Light: The Elemental Role of Phosphorus—In Our Cells, in Our Food, and in Our World." Phosphorus is the rarest of the six elements biology needs for life to occur and is one of the main ingredients found in fertilizer.
"White Light" is a reflection on the cyclical nature of life, what happens when we break that cycle, and how to repair it — told through the fate of phosphorus: in our bedrock, in our fertilizers, in our food, and in our cells. In the book, Jack Lohmann travels to the phosphate mines of England, Florida, Morocco, and Nauru to uncover the scientific, geopolitical, cultural and health consequences of the past 150 years of strip-mining phosphorus.
Jack Lohmann is a writer from Richmond, Virginia. "White Light" is his first book. He lives in the Western Isles of Scotland.
