Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

by Paul A. Offit

IN THE DEUTSCHES MUSEUM in Munich, separated from onlookers by a small barrier, stands the tabletop device Fritz Haber and Robert Le Rossignol built to fix nitrogen from the air. Onlookers occasionally stop, stare for a few seconds, and walk past, thinking little of this machine that launched the worldwide manufacture of synthetic fertilizer, a process that has given so many people their lives and—due to ongoing contamination of the environment with excess nitrogen—a process that has probably started the clock on their eventual destruction. — FRITZ HABER HAS ALLOWED three billion more people to live on the face of the Earth than would ever have been possible. His accomplishment is nothing short of phenomenal. The price tag for Haber’s invention, however, has been the gradual death of streams, lakes, waterways, and oceans. The lesson here is this: Everything has a price; the only question is how big.