fertilizer

The brown, smog-filled skies that engulf Beijing have earned China a poor reputation for environmental stewardship. But a study by an international and interdisciplinary team of environmental scientists, including McGill University’s Brian Robinson, has found that a government-run clean water program is providing substantial benefit to millions of people in the nation's capital. 

Dietary changes since the early 1960s have fueled a sharp increase in the amount of mined phosphorus used to produce the food consumed by the average person over the course of a year, according to a new study led by researchers at McGill University. Between 1961 and 2007, rising meat consumption and total calorie intake underpinned a 38% increase in the world’s per capita “phosphorus footprint,” the researchers conclude in a paper published online in Environmental Research Letters.