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Two nitrogen atoms hold each other with a triple bond, one of the strongest links in chemistry.

Chemistry Facts, sourced to Royal Society of Chemistry.

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Breaking that bond is the hard part of making fertilizer, and it consumes a serious fraction of the world's industrial energy. The Haber process forces nitrogen and hydrogen together at high pressure and temperature over an iron catalyst. Roughly half the nitrogen atoms in a typical human body passed through that reaction, which is a strange thing to be true of a person.

The claim comes from Royal Society of Chemistry, and the page it comes from was read on 2026-08-27 to confirm it still says this.

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