The costs of nitrogen pollution are hitting everyone’s pocketbook heavily, according to the European Nitrogen Assessment, a study released this month at an ENA conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, where participants placed the cost to each person in Europe at 150 to 740 Euros a year. The assessment, which is the work of 200 experts from 21 countries and 89 organizations represented at the conference, estimates that the annual cost across Europe is 70 to 320 billion Euros, or $100 to $460 billion U.S. or more than double the extra income gained from using nitrogen fertilizers in European agriculture.
The major new study warns of the growing world population relying on nitrogen “which at the same time pollutes the air, soil, and water, and contributes to global warning” for its food supply.
In the U.S., agriculture interests responded that the study overlooks the other sources of nitrogen, including cars and trucks, sewage and waste water treatment plants, and power plants, and that controlling nutrient pollution should not focus on fertilizer alone.
“At a time in which world grain use often exceeds production, questioning fertilizer’s essential role in food production is counter-productive and ignores the tremendous progress made by American fertilizer producers, retailers and their farmer customers over the past 25 years,” declared The Fertilizer Institute (TFI).
TFI’s Vice President of Scientific Programs Bill Herz asserted, “Fertilizer use efficiency is at an all-time high, with U.S. farmers applying 38 percent less nitrogen, 52 percent less phosphate, and 54 percent less potash fertilizer per bushel of corn produced than in 1980.” Herz conceded that there is still room for improvement and that the fertilizer industry understands the need to continuously enhance the management of all sources of nutrients. “That’s why we promote the 4R system using the right nutrient at the right time, at the right rate and in the right place.”
TFI’s counterpart, Fertilizers Europe, whose members were among the contributors, described the report as a unique compilation of scientific findings on nitrogen, providing a multidisciplinary introduction to the nitrogen cycle processes while stressing that nitrogen loss occurs at several steps in the cycle. “It is important to understand that around 80 percent of costs are due to emissions generated by industrial activities (transport, fuel combustion) manure and organic residue. Nitrogen fertilizers share only part of the remaining emissions although agriculture is included in the areas designated for improvement,” the group stated.
Prof. Bob Watson, chief scientific advisor to the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, concluded, “The assessment emphasizes how nitrogen links the different environmental issues that we have come to know so well: climate, biodiversity, air, water, and soil pollution. It develops the vision for a more holistic approach, which is vital if we are to make progress in tackling these issues.”
Main points include that at least ten million people in Europe are potentially exposed to drinking water with nitrate concentrations above recommended levels; nitrates cause toxic algal blooms and dead zones in the sea, especially in the North, Adriatic, and Baltic Seas, and along the coast of Brittany; and that nitrogen-based air pollution from agriculture, industry, and traffic in urban areas contributes to particulate matter air pollution, which is reducing life expectancy by several months across much of central Europe.