I don’t know about all of you but I’m
feeling a little bit sleepy so I’m going
to try and make this something that will
wake us up a little bit and keep it
short as well and it’s about one of my
favorite topics so I work a lot on gas
it’s true I love gases but I really like
one particular gas and the other forms
it takes which is nitrogen and for me
it’s it’s wonder stuff it’s it’s
something which as I hope I’m going to
prove to you it’s fundamental in terms
of all of our life but also in terms of
the global challenges we face in the
21st century and it begins begins for me
nitrogen with high school chemistry
class remember that class when you had
to do the periodic table and it was for
me I guess the next slide kind of sums
up how I felt about it I had a good
teacher so we had mr. Davis and he was
he was very enthusiastic and he wanted
to take us through the periodic table in
a way where we remember it and we did
hydrogen and hydrogen was pretty good we
had a test tube with hydrogen in and we
put a match in and it went pop so I
remembered that and then the week after
we had helium helium was the best it was
the only one I really remembered because
he brought him balloons which was okay
but the bad boys at the back worked out
that if you breathed in the helium you
got a really high voice and that really
kind of cemented in my mind that helium
was the most exciting element then we
got to nitrogen and you could see the
pain on mr. Davies face because we had
had practicals we had demonstrations
three other elements but nitrogen well
he said nice Jim’s really common if you
take a breath in now then 78% of that ed
you’re taking in his nitrogen so
remember that he said so we went to the
exam at the end of the year and we
regurgitated what we knew about squeaky
voices and helium but also that nitrogen
was a very common part of the atmosphere
I think for most of us would be glad to
them forget about nitrogen but for me it
wouldn’t go away
and it came back I guess from university
onwards that this stuff was actually
much more interesting than mr. Davies
had let on I found out that it was part
of all of us it was part of our DNA it
was part of all life on earth relying on
nitrogen and actually one of the the
most the window started to open for me
the most memorable window nitrogen was
that was the next slide which was a
University sub-aqua Club so we all went
along there as novice divers and
listened to the the kind of the grizzled
experienced divers and they told us
about this thing called being knocked
this thing which is nitrogen narcosis
where as you get deeper in the water you
absorb more of the nitrogen gas and you
get high as you can see that can be
quite dangerous because there have been
divers who worried about the fish
drowning and so give the fish their air
which is you know obviously quite bad
news for them we were all really keen to
experience this this not experience and
thankfully our instructors didn’t let us
go straight into the water and do deep
dives but what they did do for us is set
up a visit to a recompression chamber
and therefore people like this who’ve
gone down to depth they absorb lots of
nitrogen gas but then they’ve come up
too fast and what happens then is you
get bubbles and nitrogen in your
bloodstream which caused the bends this
debilitating condition so these
compression units are for people like
him to go in and so go back under
pressure and hopefully dissolve the
nitrogen so we went to this a whole
group of us from all over the world
because trainee divers and we went into
this chamber in the northwest of England
where we were studying and we were in
shorts and a t-shirt as a party
atmosphere and we started to go deeper
and it was fantastic I can recommend it
in terms of being not so not only did we
all feel fairly high but everyone took
on a high pitch Mancunian accent it was
it was surreal and I’ve looked in the
literature the medical literature is
that I couldn’t find a reason but it
really happened but that was the window
opening for me as nitrogen being
actually something which was interesting
important and like I say is the more I
worked on it and found out about it the
more I realized that actually it was
fundamental to our life on earth doing
again next slide so one of the key facts
I found out fairly early on is that we
as a society have really struggled with
saying the world struggle and also with
getting enough reactive nitrogen so in
terms of the the early 20th century the
world population was growing fast
we needed more food and reactive
nitrogen that kind of fertilizers we put
on the field was one of the main
limitations for that and a great
scientist the controversial scientists
called Fritz Haber came up with a way of
taking all that nitrogen that we’re
breathing in now which is unreactive in
the air and making it a reactive form
and if we look at our population in here
today and around the world about two out
of five of every one of us our existence
to that invention and to our ability to
fix reactive nitrogen from the
atmosphere if we think about the future
we think about the 21st century and the
challenges that we face in terms of food
security climate change water air
pollution nitrogen is is fundamental to
them if we go to the next slide and take
click again take a scenario where we
need to feed 9 or 10 billion people by
2050 that reactive nitrogen those
fertilizers they’re going to decide
whether we win or whether we lose in
terms of that battle for food security
they can be great saviors but they also
can be a real danger there’s a real
double edged sword which emerged for me
the more I worked on nitrogen into if we
put it in the wrong place at the wrong
time it can be a real source of extra
greenhouse gas emissions so drive more
climate change it can cause additional
air quality issues of air pollution and
it can also if we put nitrogen on these
fields at the wrong time escape into the
water and cause water pollution and
algal blooms and I couldn’t in this talk
leave out my favorite example of
nitrogen pollution you want to go to the
next slide so this you’ll recognize
probably as Hugh Laurie or house now
house is a medical drama series which is
on a few years ago hopefully you all
know it but if you haven’t seen
it the rough plot for house was that
each week you had some something go
wrong he was a doctor he had a team of
doctors and at the beginning of each
week there would be an old case a really
difficult case that house and his team
had to crack in terms of what was wrong
with the patient and nitrogen is one of
those things where once it escapes from
fields it kind of goes there’s a cascade
through the system a bit like the
butterfly effect in terms of nitrogen
going in and out soils and water and one
of the things we find with the water we
drink is it has to be carefully
controlled because if we have too much
reactive nitrogen going into our body we
run a risk or a thing called blue baby
syndrome
now blue baby syndrome would have been
great for house because to start off
with the episode you’d have someone
turning blue and this is quite a rare
condition thankfully it’s all about the
nitrogen binding with your your blood so
stopping it being able to carry oxygen
and it’s usually in babies and it’s
really around private wells now rather
than the public water systems but one of
the most recent cases which should
definitely be in episode was a grown
woman rushed into hospital in the US and
she was turning blue and the doctors you
know were really worried her condition
was deteriorating and then one of them
recognized well it’s a grown-up but this
could be blue baby syndrome they gave
her the treatment for it and she started
to recover and then they asked her okay
you know what have you been doing in
terms of what brought you to us in this
state and she went through what she had
been doing in terms of the previous
night she’d had a meal she drunk lots of
water so they did the kind of house
thing they went to her house they tested
the the food she had been eating they
tested the water and there was no
nitrate there it’s just like a house
episode that they thought they had the
result but that wasn’t the answer and
then they went back to her and said okay
just like he would do just like house
would do what have you been doing for
the whole week tell us a bit more about
what you’ve been up to and it turned out
this woman was a keen runner and about a
week before she had a bit of a muscle
strain she went to her local doctor and
he gave her a cold pack and again the
doctors in this case
in houses episode they wouldn’t know or
what’s the relevance their house would
have said look in the icebox because
what they did was taught this woman a
bit more about what she did with that
cold pack and she said I kept it and I
put it in the icebox
myself they went to her house again just
like he would have instructed they
opened up the icebox there was the cold
pack and the cold pack had split open
and the cold pack was made of
concentrated ammonium nitrate and when
she went down in that night before to
have a drink of water after a hot meal
she had had a big concentrated drink of
ammonium nitrate of fertilizer and given
herself blue baby syndrome I think if
you’re listening Hugh Laurie come back
for a special here in Edinburgh we’ll do
the thing we’ll do blue baby syndrome it
will be a great episode so in terms of
that double-edged sword that’s an
example of where reactive nitrogen in
the wrong place at the wrong time can be
a real problem and like I say it’s a
driver of climate change in the wrong
place at the wrong time
same in terms of a sit of occasion and
air pollution but if we go to the next
slide yes it’s a double-edged sword but
if we use it in the right way so we’ll
use it in terms of precision agriculture
making sure that we do grow our crops
crops more effectively that we have
equity of access to this really valuable
resource then we can actually help
tackle food security help feed those 9
10 billion people by the middle of the
century reduce air pollution reduce
water pollution I think for me nitrogen is a wonder stuff