A more personal way of gauging the impact of Haber-Bosch is to look at your own body. About half the nitrogen in you came out of a Haber-Bosch factory. Don’t worry: Nitrogen is nitrogen, the atoms in Haber-Bosch ammonia are precisely the same as the atoms in the best natural manure, and they all come, one way or another, from the air you breathe—but half the nitrogen in your blood, your skin and hair, your proteins and DNA, is synthetic.
