![]() ![]() The most important legacy of Silent Spring, though, was a new public awareness that nature was vulnerable to human intervention. The public debate moved quickly from whether pesticides were dangerous to which ones were dangerous, and the burden of proof shifted from the opponents of unrestrained pesticide use to the manufacturers. As a result, DDT came under much closer government supervision and was eventually banned. Kennedy ordered the President's Science Advisory Committee to examine the issues the book raised, its report thoroughly vindicated both Silent Spring and its author. Many eminent scientists rose to her defense, and when President John F. Anticipating the reaction of the chemical industry, she had compiled Silent Spring as one would a lawyer's brief, with no fewer than 55 pages of notes and a list of experts who had read and approved the manuscript. Her careful preparation, however, had paid off. Some of the attacks were more personal, questioning Carson's integrity and even her sanity. "If man were to faithfully follow the teachings of Miss Carson," complained an executive of the American Cyanamid Company, "we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth." Monsanto published and distributed 5,000 copies of a brochure parodying Silent Spring entitled "The Desolate Year," relating the devastation and inconvenience of a world where famine, disease, and insects ran amok because chemical pesticides had been banned. The book's most haunting and famous chapter, "A Fable for Tomorrow," depicted a nameless American town where all life-from fish to birds to apple blossoms to human children-had been "silenced" by the insidious effects of DDT.įirst serialized in The New Yorker in June 1962, the book alarmed readers across America and, not surprisingly, brought a howl of indignation from the chemical industry. Carson concluded that DDT and other pesticides had irrevocably harmed animals and had contaminated the world's food supply. A single application on a crop, she wrote, killed insects for weeks and months-not only the targeted insects but countless more-and remained toxic in the environment even after it was diluted by rainwater. It meticulously described how DDT entered the food chain and accumulated in the fatty tissues of animals, including human beings, and caused cancer and genetic damage. Silent Spring took Carson four years to complete. Ninety percent of all insects are good, and if they are killed, things go out of kilter right away." Another was Carson, who wrote to Reader's Digest to propose an article about a series of tests on DDT being conducted not far from where she lived in Maryland. One was nature writer Edwin Way Teale, who warned, "A spray as indiscriminate as DDT can upset the economy of nature as much as a revolution upsets social economy. When DDT became available for civilian use in 1945, there were only a few people who expressed second thoughts about this new miracle compound. Its inventor was awarded the Nobel Prize. ![]() troops while being used as an effective delousing powder in Europe. Developed in 1939, it first distinguished itself during World War II, clearing South Pacific islands of malaria-causing insects for U.S. Unlike most pesticides, whose effectiveness is limited to destroying one or two types of insects, DDT was capable of killing hundreds of different kinds at once. Although she rarely used the term, Carson held an ecological view of nature, describing in precise yet poetic language the complex web of life that linked mollusks to seabirds to the fish swimming in the ocean's deepest and most inaccessible reaches.ĭDT, the most powerful pesticide the world had ever known, exposed nature's vulnerability. Her books Under the Sea Wind, The Sea Around Us (which stayed on the New York Times best-seller list for 86 weeks), and The Edge of the Sea were hymns to the interconnectedness of nature and all living things. "Things go out of kilter"Ĭarson was happiest writing about the strength and resilience of natural systems. The educational brochures she wrote for FWS, as well as her published books and magazine articles, were characterized by meticulous research and a poetic evocation of her subject. A native of rural Pennsylvania, she had grown up with an enthusiasm for nature matched only by her love of writing and poetry. Fish and Wildlife Service, or FWS, was uniquely equipped to create so startling and inflammatory a book. Carson, a renowned nature author and a former marine biologist with the U.S. ![]()
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