It was the Spring of 1983, during my freshman year of college, that I first read Silent Spring. Looking now at a faded transcript, it was assigned reading for English 103 Modern Science and Sociology. I can’t exactly put into words why that book had such an impact on me other than to say it stirred some deep emotions connected to my love of nature for as long as I can remember. Rachel Carson’s work has given me pause to think, to act, and to appreciate the beauty of nature my entire life. So much so that whenever I find a hatched bird’s egg in late spring, I think of Silent Spring.
Silent Spring was one of the landmark books of the 20th century and was motivated by Carson’s love of nature. It took her four years to complete and meticulously describe how DDT (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) entered the food chain and accumulated in the fatty tissues of animals where its metabolites made bird eggshells thinner leading to egg breakage and embryo death. She described DDT as a human carcinogen contributing to cancer and genetic damage. She surmised that DDT and other pesticides had irrevocably harmed animals and had contaminated the world’s food supply. In one chapter, and most famously referenced, she depicts a nameless American town where everything from children to fish to birds to blossoms had been silenced by the harmful effects of DDT.
There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to be in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards, where white clouds of bloom drifted above the green land. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the mornings. Along the roads, laurel, viburnum, and alder, great ferns and wild flowers delighted the traveler’s eye through much of the year. Even in winter, the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow.
Then, one spring, a strange blight crept over the area, and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community; mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens, and the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was the shadow of death. The farmers told of much illness among their families. In the town, the doctors were becoming more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness that had appeared among their patients. There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among the adults but also among the children, who would be stricken while they were at play, and would die within a few hours. And there was a strange stillness. The birds, for example—where had they gone? Many people, baffled and disturbed, spoke of them. The feeding stations in the back yards were deserted. The few birds to be seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. The people had done it themselves.
DDT, the most powerful pesticide the world had ever known, exposed nature's vulnerability. 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. Developed in 1939, it first distinguished itself during World War II, clearing South Pacific islands of malaria-causing insects for U.S. troops while being used as an effective delousing powder in Europe. Its inventor was awarded the Nobel Prize.
The worry of scientists three decades ago that there was no good, less toxic, cost-effective substitute
for DDT to control mosquitoes and other pests is as true today as it was in 1972.
The book was first published in a three part series in the New Yorker in June of 1962 – here, here and here. It appeared in full print in September of the same year. It was then that President Kennedy mentioned the book at a press conference in which the President’s Science Advisory Committee was questioning the use of pesticides. The PSAC issued a report upholding Carson’s warnings of misuse of pesticides. In 1963 Carson spoke before Congress calling for new policies to protect the environment. Her message was relentless: human beings were altering nature, and not for the better.
One way to open your eyes to unnoticed beauty is to ask yourself, ‘What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?’ ~Rachel Carson
Carson was branded by the chemical industry as an alarmist. And yet she persisted. Some say that Silent Spring was the catalyst for the modern environmental movement, as what followed in the history of things is a steady focus and creation of environmental protections, and continuing after Carson’s untimely death from breast cancer in 1964.
The controversial use of DDT continued, however. In March 1973, Mary Jane Large wrote a piece in Ecology Law Quarterly entitled: The Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act of 1972: A Compromise Approach. It is a lengthy and tedious read on the intense lobbying and political debate of pesticide control.
Eventually DDT was banned for use in the US, yet to date there exists a 107 year history of insecticides, fungicides and rodenticides in this nation.
And the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), founded 30 years ago in Bozeman, Montana, and the nation’s oldest and largest institute dedicated to improving environmental quality through property rights and markets says this about DDT:
In 1972, the U.S. government banned the pesticide DDT. The chemical had been used excessively, especially by the federal government, which refused to respect the rights of those who didn't want it on their property. The decision to prohibit DDT's use may have played a significant role in helping the bald eagle and other birds make a comeback. But it has also allowed malaria to make a comeback.
The worry of scientists three decades ago that there was no good, less toxic, cost-effective substitute for DDT to control mosquitos and other pests is as true today as it was in 1972. A disease that was on the way to being vanquished has returned with a vengeance.
The American Enterprise Institute, that describes itself as a public policy think tank dedicated to defending human dignity, expanding human potential, and building a freer and safer world, published a policy statement on the rise and fall of DDT since it’s banning in 1972.
DDT is probably the single most valuable chemical ever synthesized to prevent disease. It has been used continually in public health programs over the past sixty years and has saved millions from diseases like malaria, typhus, and yellow fever. Despite a public backlash in the 1960s, mainstream scientific and public health communities continue to recognize its utility and safety. DDT’s delisting for various uses in the United States in 1972 was a political, not a scientific, judgment. After decades of extensive study and use, DDT has not been proven to be harmful to humans. But by 1997, its future looked bleak. Environmentalists were pushing for it to be banned worldwide, and its most articulate champion, the South African Department of Health, stopped using it.
On 2/3/17, Paul Offit published a review of a 2-hour PBS special on Rachel Carson: How Rachel Carson Cost Millions of People Their Lives
Rachel Carson was an American hero. In the early 1960s, she was the first to warn that a pesticide called DDT could accumulate in the environment, the first to show that it could harm fish, birds, and other wildlife, the first to warn that its overuse would render it ineffective, and the first to predict that more natural means of pest control—like bacteria that killed mosquito larvae—should be used instead.
Although DDT soon became synonymous with poison, the pesticide was an effective weapon in the fight against an infection that has killed—and continues to kill—more people than any other: malaria. By 1960, due largely to DDT, malaria had been eliminated from eleven countries, including the United States.
Since the mid 1970s, when DDT was eliminated from global eradication efforts, tens of millions of people have died from malaria unnecessarily: most have been children less than five years old. While it was reasonable to have banned DDT for agricultural use, it was unreasonable to have eliminated it from public health use.
Whichever side you take, if there are sides in such a case, Carson herself is noted as saying that it was not her contention that chemical pesticides never be used. She was 57-years-old when she died, and I’d like to believe at the top of her game. Had she lived longer, I’d also like to believe that she would never had endorsed a ban on DDT for the control of malaria. What she would have done is continue her field research, her fierce activism in protecting the environment and living creatures. She most definitely would have resisted and continued to persist despite being labeled an alarmist.
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength
that will endure as long as life lasts. ~ Rachel Carson
Be good to yourselves. Stay in the light.
