14 DAY TRIAL // Phosphorus is undoubtedly one of the most important chemicals in the world. It is one of the six elements that allow for life to exist here at all. At this point, experts say that resources are scarce, and this constituted the main subject of a new art exhibit at the Arizona State University.
Sustainability and fertilizers were also among the topics addressed by artists from Houston, Portland, Chicago and Phoenix. The participants were working in partnership with the organizers of the Sustainable Phosphorus Summit.
The event will take place at ASU between February 3-5, under the guise of the US National Science Foundation (NSF). Organizers thought that they should join the Summit and the juried competition together in a single event, meant to raise awareness on the issue of phosphorus scarcity.
“We need to be concerned about the emerging threat of phosphorus scarcity, as well as the impacts of too much phosphorus through run-off into lakes and oceans,” explains NSF official Matt Kane.
He holds an appointment as a program director in the NSF Division of Environmental Biology (DEB), the organization supporting the phosphorus summit. The expert says that phosphorus prevents humans from building bones, growing food, or even keeping their DNA together.
While the environment is currently being polluted by phosphorus levels exceeding normal ones by 400 percent, phosphate sources are declining around the world. The latter are the only viable sources for the chemical, and demand is rising.
Experts who will meet at the Summit – which begins today – will discuss issues pertaining to changing the global view of phosphorus. This means that the scientists will investigate methods of making people start looking at the chemical as a finite resource.
At the same time, artists exhibiting their work at ASU will display paintings, photography, sculpture, multimedia and other innovative approaches to raising awareness on this issue as much as possible.
Exhibits and summits such as these will become commonplace in the near future, experts warn, as numerous types of resources reach their sustainability limit, and begin to get depleted.
As this happens, we have only two choices – either adapt and consume less, or design alternatives to replace those disappearing chemicals with. The latter is a solution for complex things, but chemists cannot exactly design a new chemical element to replace phosphorus with.