If the plant fertilizer is in your eyes or on your skin, flush thoroughly with water for at least 15 minutes. If you ingested the substance, do not induce vomiting unless the poison control center tells you to. You should drink water or milk, unless they advise against it. The poison control center may advise you to go to the hospital. Once there, the staff will assess the severity of your poisoning.
Your doctor may run tests to check for methemoglobinemia. In this condition, the nitrate binds to the hemoglobin in your blood. Normally, hemoglobin is the compound that allows the blood cells to carry oxygen throughout your body.
When you have methemoglobinemia, your blood cannot adequately circulate oxygen, causing a bluish tint in the oxygen-starved areas. If necessary, doctors at the hospital may give you medications, breathing support, or IV liquids. Your ability to recover from plant food poisoning depends on the following factors:. You should always seek immediate medical care if you or a loved one has been poisoned by plant food, as the condition — if not treated — can be fatal.
A sore throat is typically caused by a common infection, like a cold or strep throat. Do you have a stomach bug or food poisoning? Discriminating between the two can be difficult. A stomach bug and food poisoning can be commonly…. People often see nitrates and nitrites as harmful, but this may not always be true. Vegetables, for example, can be rich in nitrates.
Find information on isopropyl alcohol poisoning symptoms, causes, and diagnosis. Unfortunately, plants and animals cannot directly use nitrogen gas. As humans, we get our nitrogen from the food we eat. High protein foods like meat, fish, nuts, or beans are high in nitrogen. Plants get their nitrogen from the soil and nitrogen is the most common nutrient to limit plant growth. However, even with all this natural nitrogen fixation , low nitrogen levels in soils often still limit plant growth.
This is why most fertilizers contain nitrogen compounds and why industrial fertilizers are essential in order to produce enough crops to feed the human population. As mentioned, most nitrogen on Earth is present as nitrogen gas, which is unusable for plants and animals. This industrial fixation is called the Haber-Bosch process. Almost all the nitrogen in industrial fertilizers is fixed through the Haber-Bosch process. This industrial fixation of nitrogen is performed in chemical laboratories and large factories all over the world.
The Haber-Bosch process requires that nitrogen gas be mixed with hydrogen gas H 2 and put under enormous pressure times atmospheric pressure. Sustaining these high pressures and temperatures requires a huge amount of energy.
The short answer is that nitrogen-containing fertilizers help crop plants grow faster and helps to produce more crops. This allows agricultural land to be used more efficiently because fertilized land produces more food. The crops take it up of course! Unfortunately, that is not the end of the story. So, while fertilizers make crops grow better and faster, half of the fixed nitrogen we add is lost.
The lost nitrogen can end up in the atmosphere or it can be washed out of the soil and end up in waterways, such as groundwater, streams, lakes, rivers, and oceans Figure 2.
This lost nitrogen causes a variety of environmental problems [ 2 ]. Some soil microorganisms can transform nitrogen provided in fertilizers into nitrogen-containing gases, which get released into the atmosphere like the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide N 2 O. Greenhouse gases are one of the main factors accelerating global warming. In waterways, the addition of external nutrients like excess nitrogen is called eutrophication.
Eutrophication is an unwanted fertilization of a waterway and it promotes the growth of microorganisms, algae, and plants, just like the fertilization of soil.
However, the fast growth of microorganisms and plants can use up all the oxygen in these waterways and turn them into so-called dead zones, because aquatic animals cannot live without oxygen.
Eutrophication can also lead to the growth of algal species that produce toxic chemicals, called harmful algal blooms. While we need nitrogen from fertilizers in our agricultural soils, we do not need or want additional nitrogen in our atmosphere or waterways. Nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium are essential plant nutrients, and fertilizers are graded by the amounts of these elements the fertilizers contain, also called their "NPK rating" from those elements' abbreviations on the periodic table.
Ammonium nitrate, or NH4-NO3, is frequently added to improve a fertilizer's nitrogen content. It's relatively stable under most conditions and is inexpensive to manufacture, according to Slate , making the chemical a popular alternative to other, more expensive nitrogen sources. But ammonium nitrate has a potentially lethal downside: If it comes into contact with an open flame or other ignition source, it explodes violently.
The explosive force occurs when solid ammonium nitrate decomposes very rapidly into two gases, nitrous oxide and water vapor. The deadliest industrial accident in U. A carelessly tossed cigarette started a fire aboard a ship carrying about 2, tons 2,, kilograms of ammonium nitrate packed in paper sacks.
When the chemical exploded, it caused a blast powerful enough to knock people to the ground in Galveston, Texas, 10 miles 16 kilometers away. The detonation also caused a chain reaction when a nearby ship, also carrying ammonium nitrate, exploded, setting fires at chemical tanks and oil refineries near the port.
An estimated people were killed in the disaster. But not all disasters involving ammonium nitrate are accidents: The fertilizer was packed into a rented truck and used by terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols to kill people in the bombing of the Alfred P.
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