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This is a rigorous presentation of the effects of pesticide use as well as a call to greater awareness of our environment.
Introduction by Linda Lear
Headlines in the New York Times in July 1962 captured the national sentiment: “Silent Spring is now noisy summer.” In the few months between the New Yorker’s serialization of Silent Spring in June and its publication in book form that September, Rachel Carson’s alarm touched off a national debate on the use of chemical pesticides, the responsibility of science, and the limits of technological progress. When Carson died barely eighteen months later in the spring of 1964, at the age of fifty-six, she had set in motion a course of events that would result in a ban on the domestic production of DDT and the creation of a grass-roots movement demanding protection of the environment through state and federal regulation. Carson’s writing initiated a transformation in the relationship between humans and the natural world and stirred an awakening of public environmental consciousness.
It is hard to remember the cultural climate that greeted Silent Spring and to understand the fury that was launched against its quietly determined author. Carson’s thesis that we were subjecting ourselves to slow poisoning by the misuse of chemical pesticides that polluted the environment may seem like common currency now, but in 1962 Silent Spring contained the kernel of social revolution. Carson wrote at a time of new affluence and intense social conformity. The cold war, with its climate of suspicion and intolerance, was at its zenith. The chemical industry, one of the chief beneficiaries of postwar technology, was also one of the chief authors of the nation’s prosperity. DDT enabled the conquest of insect pests in agriculture and of ancient insect-borne disease just as surely as the atomic bomb destroyed America’s military enemies and dramatically altered the balance of power between humans and nature. The public endowed chemists, at work in their starched white coats in remote laboratories, with almost divine wisdom. The results of their labors were gilded with the presumption of beneficence. In postwar America, science was god, and science was male.
Carson was an outsider who had never been part of the scientific establishment, first because she was a woman but also because her chosen field, biology, was held in low esteem in the nuclear age. Her career path was nontraditional; she had no academic affiliation, no institutional voice. She deliberately wrote for the public rather than for a narrow scientific audience. For anyone else, such independence would have been an enormous detriment. But by the time Silent Spring was published, Carson’s outsider status had become a distinct advantage. As the science establishment would discover, it was impossible to dismiss her.
Rachel Carson first discovered nature in the company of her mother, a devotee of the nature study movement. She wandered the banks of the Allegheny River in the pristine village of Springdale, Pennsylvania, just north of Pittsburgh, observing the wildlife and plants around her and particularly curious about the habits of birds.
Her childhood, though isolated by poverty and family turmoil, was not lonely. She loved to read and displayed an obvious talent for writing, publishing her first story in a children’s literary magazine at the age of ten. By the time she entered Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College), she had read widely in the English Romantic tradition and had articulated a personal sense of mission, her “vision splendid.” A dynamic female zoology professor expanded her intellectual horizons by urging her to take the daring step of majoring in biology rather than English. In doing so, Carson discovered that science not only engaged her mind but gave her “something to write about.” She decided to pursue a career in science, aware that in the 1930s there were few opportunities for women.
Scholarships allowed her to study at Woods Hole Biological Laboratory, where she fell in love with the sea, and at Johns Hopkins University, where she was isolated, one of a handful of women in marine biology. She had no mentors and no money to continue in graduate school after completing an M.A. in zoology in 1932. Along the way she worked as a laboratory assistant in the school of public health, where she was lucky enough to receive some training in experimental genetics. As employment opportunities in science dwindled, she began writing articles about the natural history of Chesapeake Bay for the Baltimore Sun. Although these were years of financial and emotional struggle, Carson realized that she did not have to choose between science and writing, that she had the talent to do both.
From childhood on, Carson was interested in the long history of the earthh, in its patterns and rhythms, its ancient seas, its evolving life forms. She was an ecologist—fascinated by intersections and connections buttttt always aware of the whole—before that perspective was accorded scholarly legitimacy. A fossil shell she found while digging in the hills above the Allegheny as a little girl prompted questions about the creatures of the oceans that had once covered the area. At Johns Hopkins, an experiment with changes in the salinity of water in an eel tank prompted her to study the life cycle of those ancient fish that migrate from continental rivers to the Sargasso Sea. The desire to understand the sea from a nonhuman perspective led to her first book, Under the Sea-Wind, which featured a common sea bird, the sanderling, whose life cycle, driven by ancestral instincts, the rhythms of the tides, and the search for food, involves an arduous journey from Patagonia to the Arctic Circle. From the outset Carson acknowledged her “kinship with other forms of life” and always wrote to impress that relationship on her readers.
Carson was confronted with the problem of environmental pollution at a formative period in her life. During her adolescence the second wave of the industrial revolution was turning the Pittsburgh area into the iron and steel capital of the Western world. The little town of Springdale, sandwiched between two huge coal-.red electric plants, was transformed into a grimy wasteland, its air fouled by chemical emissions, its river polluted by industrial waste. Carson could not wait to escape. She observed that the captains of industry took no notice of the defilement of her hometown and no responsibility for it. The experience made her forever suspicious of promises of “better living through chemistry” and of claims that technology would create a progressively brighter future.
In 1936 Carson landed a job as a part-time writer of radio scripts on ocean life for the federal Bureau of Fisheries in Baltimore. By night she wrote freelance articles for the Sun describing the pollution of the oyster beds of the Chesapeake by industrial runoff; she urged changes in oyster seeding and dredging practices and political regulation of the effluents pouring into the bay. She signed her articles “R. L. Carson,” hoping that readers would assume that the writer was male and thus take her science seriously.
A year later Carson became a junior aquatic biologist for the Bureau of Fisheries, one of only two professional women there, and began a slow but steady advance through the ranks of the agency, which became the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1939. Her literary talents were quickly recognized, and she was assigned to edit other scientists’ field reports, a task she turned into an opportunity to broaden her scientific knowledge, deepen her connection with nature, and observe the making of science policy. By 1949 Carson was editor in chief of all the agency’s publications, writing her own distinguished series on the new U.S wildlife refuge system and participating in interagency conferences on the latest developments in science and technology.
Her government responsibilities slowed the pace of her own writing. It took her ten years to synthesize the latest research on oceanography, but her perseverance paid off. She became an overnight literary celebrity when The Sea Around Us was first serialized in The New Yorker in 1951. The book won many awards, including the National Book Award for nonfiction, and Carson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was lauded not only for her scientific expertise and synthesis of wide-ranging material but also for her lyrical, poetic voice. The Sea Around Us and its best- selling successor, The Edge of the Sea, made Rachel Carson the foremost science writer in America. She understood that there was a deep need for writers who could report on and interpret the natural world. Readers around the world found comfort in her clear explanations of complex science, her description of the creation of the seas, and her obvious love of the wonders of nature. Hers was a trusted voice in a world riddled by uncertainty.
Whenever she spoke in public, however, she took notice of ominous new trends. “Intoxicated with a sense of his own power,” she wrote, “[mankind] seems to be going farther and farther into more experiments for the destruction of himself and his world.” Technology, she feared, was moving on a faster trajectory than mankind’s sense of moral responsibility. In 1945 she tried to interest Reader’s Digest in the alarming evidence of environmental damage from the widespread use of the new synthetic chemical DDT and other long-lasting agricultural pesticides. By 1957 Carson believed that these chemicals were potentially harmful to the long-term health of the whole biota. The pollution of the environment by the profligate use of toxic chemicals was the ultimate act of human hubris, a product of ignorance and greed that she felt compelled to bear witness against. She insisted that what science conceived and technology made possible must first be judged for its safety and benefit to the “whole stream of life.” “There would be no peace for me, she wrote to a friend, “if I kept silent.”
Silent Spring, the product of her unrest, deliberately challenged the wisdom of a government that allowed toxic chemicals to be put into the environment before knowing the long-term consequences of their use. Writing in language that everyone could understand and cleverly using the public’s knowledge of atomic fallout as a reference point, Carson described how chlorinated hydrocarbons and organic phosphorus insecticides altered the cellular processes of plants, animals, and, by implication, humans. Science and technology, she charged, had become the handmaidens of the chemical industry’s rush for profits and control of markets. Rather than protecting the public from potential harm, the government not only gave its approval to these new products but did so without establishing any mechanism of accountability. Carson questioned the moral right of government to leave its citizens unprotected from substances they could neither physically avoid nor publicly question. Such callous arrogance could end only in the destruction of the living world. “Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life?” she asked. “They should not be called ‘insecticides’ but ‘biocides.’” In Silent Spring, and later in testimony before a congressional committee, Carson asserted that one of the most basic human rights must surely be the “right of the citizen to be secure in his own home against the intrusion of poisons applied by other persons.” Through ignorance, greed, and negligence, government had allowed “poisonous and biologically potent chemicals” to fall “indiscriminately into the hands of persons largely or wholly ignorant of their potentials for harm.” When the public protested, it was “fed little tranquillizing pills of half-truth” by a government that refused to take responsibility for or acknowledge evidence of damage. Carson challenged such moral vacuity. “The obligation to endure,” she wrote, “gives us the right to know.” In Carson’s view, the postwar culture of science that arrogantly claimed dominion over nature was the philosophic root of the problem. Human beings, she insisted, were not in control of nature but simply one of its parts: the survival of one part depended upon the health of all. She protested the “contamination of man’s total environment” with substances that accumulate in the tissues of plants, animals, and humans and have the potential to alter the genetic structure of organisms.
Carson argued that the human body was permeable and, as such, vulnerable to toxic substances in the environment. Levels of exposure could not be controlled, and scientists could not accurately predict the long-term effects of bioaccumulation in the cells or the impact of such a mixture of chemicals on human health. She categorically rejected the notion proposed by industry that there were human “thresholds” for such poisons, as well as its corollary, that the human body had “assimilative capacities” that rendered the poisons harmless. In one of the most controversial parts of her book, Carson presented evidence that some human cancers were linked to pesticide exposure. That evidence and its subsequent elaboration by many other researchers continue to fuel one of the most challenging and acrimonious debates within the scientific and environmental communities.
Carson’s concept of the ecology of the human body was a major departure in our thinking about the relationship between humans and the natural environment. It had enormous consequences for our understanding of human health as well as our attitudes toward environmental risk. Silent Spring proved that our bodies are not boundaries. Chemical corruption of the globe affects us from conception to death. Like the rest of nature, we are vulnerable to pesticides; we too are permeable. All forms of life are more alike than different.
Carson believed that human health would ultimately reflect the environment’s ills. Inevitably this idea has changed our response to nature, to science, and to the technologies that devise and deliver contamination. Although the scientific community has been slow to acknowledge this aspect of Carson’s work, her concept of the ecology of the human body may well prove to be one of her most lasting contributions.
In 1962, however, the multimillion-dollar industrial chemical industry was not about to allow a former government editor, a female scientist without a Ph.D. or an institutional affiliation, known only for her lyrical books on the sea, to undermine public confidence in its products or to question its integrity. It was clear to the industry that Rachel Carson was a hysterical woman whose alarming view of the future could be ignored or, if necessary, suppressed. She was a “bird and bunny lover,” a woman who kept cats and was therefore clearly suspect. She was a romantic “spinster” who was simply overwrought about genetics. In short, Carson was a woman out of control. She had overstepped the bounds of her gender and her science. But just in case her claims did gain an audience, the industry spent a quarter of a million dollars to discredit her research and malign her character. In the end, the worst they could say was that she had told only one side of the story and had based her argument on unverifiable case studies.
There is another, private side to the controversy over Silent Spring. Unbeknown to her detractors in government and industry, Carson was fighting a far more powerful enemy than corporate outrage: a rapidly metastasizing breast cancer. The miracle is that she lived to complete the book at all, enduring a “catalogue of illnesses,” as she called it. She was immune to the chemical industry’s efforts to malign her; rather, her energies were focused on the challenge of survival in order to bear witness to the truth as she saw it. She intended to disturb and disrupt, and she did so with dignity and deliberation.
After Silent Spring caught the attention of President John F. Kennedy, federal and state investigations were launched into the validity of Carson’s claims. Communities that had been subjected to aerial spraying of pesticides against their wishes began to organize on a grass-roots level against the continuation of toxic pollution. Legislation was readied at all governmental levels to defend against a new kind of invisible fallout. The scientists who had claimed a “holy grail” of knowledge were forced to admit a vast ignorance. While Carson knew that one book could not alter the dynamic of the capitalist system, an environmental movement grew from her challenge, led by a public that demanded that science and government be held accountable. Carson remains an example of what one committed individual can do to change the direction of society. She was a revolutionary spokesperson for the rights of all life. She dared to speak out and confront the issue of the destruction of nature and to frame it as a debate over the quality of all life.
Rachel Carson knew before she died that her work had made a difference. She was honored by medals and awards, and posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981. But she also knew that the issues she had raised would not be solved quickly or easily and that affluent societies are slow to sacrifice for the good of the whole. It was not until six years after Carson’s death that concerned Americans celebrated the first Earth Day and that Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act establishing the Environmental Protection Agency as a buffer against our own handiwork. The domestic production of DDT was banned, but not its export, ensuring that the pollution of the earth’s atmosphere, oceans, streams, and wildlife would continue unabated. DDT is found in the livers of birds and fish on every oceanic island on the planet and in the breast milk of every mother. In spite of decades of environmental protest and awareness, and in spite of Rachel Carson’s apocalyptic call alerting Americans to the problem of toxic chemicals, reduction of the use of pesticides has been one of the major policy failures of the environmental era. Global contamination is a fact of modern life.
Silent Spring compels each generation to reevaluate its relationship to the natural world. We are a nation still debating the questions it raised, still unresolved as to how to act for the common good, how to achieve environmental justice. In arguing that public health and the environment, human and natural, are inseparable, Rachel Carson insisted that the role of the expert had to be limited by democratic access and must include public debate about the risks of hazardous technologies. She knew then, as we have learned since, that scientific evidence by its very nature is incomplete and scientists will inevitably disagree on what constitutes certain proof of harm. It is difficult to make public policy in such cases when government’s obligation to protect is mitigated by the nature of science itself.
Rachel Carson left us a legacy that not only embraces the future of life, in which she believed so fervently, but sustains the human spirit. She confronted us with the chemical corruption of the globe and called on us to regulate our appetites—a truly revolutionary stance—for our self- preservation. “It seems reasonable to believe,” she wrote, “that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction.” Wonder and humility are just some of the gifts of Silent Spring. They remind us that we, like all other living creatures, are part of the vast ecosystems of the earth, part of the whole stream of life. This is a book to relish: not for the dark side of human nature, but for the promise of life’s possibility.
Copyright © 1962 by Rachel L. Carson Copyright © renewed 1990 by Roger Christie Introduction copyright © 2002 by Linda Lear Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.
| Acknowledgments | ||
| Introduction | ||
| 1 | A Fable for Tomorrow | 1 |
| 2 | The Obligation to Endure | 5 |
| 3 | Elixirs of Death | 15 |
| 4 | Surface Waters and Underground Seas | 39 |
| 5 | Realms of the Soil | 53 |
| 6 | Earth's Green Mantle | 63 |
| 7 | Needless Havoc | 85 |
| 8 | And No Birds Sing | 103 |
| 9 | Rivers of Death | 129 |
| 10 | Indiscriminately from the Skies | 154 |
| 11 | Beyond the Dreams of the Borgias | 173 |
| 12 | The Human Price | 187 |
| 13 | Through a Narrow Window | 199 |
| 14 | One in Every Four | 219 |
| 15 | Nature Fights Back | 245 |
| 16 | The Rumblings of an Avalanche | 262 |
| 17 | The Other Road | 277 |
| List of Principal Sources | 301 | |
| Afterword | 357 | |
| Index | 365 |
Anonymous
Posted December 5, 2005
To those who have not yet read this book, do not be fooled by the baseless criticism posted in negative reviews here. These negative notices are themselves ignorant of Carson's work and lack sound ecological understanding. 'Silent Spring' was published as a longer work, and not in a peer review journal, because of Carson's intended audience DDT was affecting the environment in immediate and horribly detrimental ways, even though scienctific studies had previously shown the destruction it wrecked. Carson wrote in a format which had the greatest ability to disseminate her work among the general public and thus have a greater effect of public policy, as was vitally needed. It was not necessary to publish in a peer journal, additionally, because the information which supported her claims already existed in the scientific world. She drew only on independent studies, which elimated common bias in studies conducted by special interest groups. The criticism which 'Silent Spring' evoked did not come from the greater scientific community, but instead from industry which relied on DDT for profit, as well as those seeking to discredit a women speaking in a field and in a role traditionally dominated by men. After the work's publication in 1961, JFK ordered an invesigation into the legitimacy of Carson's assertions this invesitgation confirmed Carson's work, and initated a decade's long environmental reform in the government. Furthermore, the environmental degradation done by DDT cannot be measured in dubious assertions of malaria deaths. Beside the baseless nature of such assertions, which fails in scientific proof, such attacks attempt to discredit an environmentalism out of ignorance in an area in which that environmentalism is strongly anchored: it seeks to protect the world as a whole, humans and nature included. If there is no world for us to live, no air to breath or water to drink, then there is no point, no effect, no good that can come out of any technoligical innovation. Essentially, do not be disuaded from reading this book by reviews here if you do not believe my argument, for whatever reason, read the book yourself, look up the facts for yourself. The facts don't lie the comments here have. For further information on what I have written here, see the work of Douglas Allchin, Professor at the University of Texas, an essay entitled 'Rachel Carson & Silent Spring'
14 out of 17 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 29, 2007
Rachel Carson set out to maliciously prosecute DDT as a carcinogen because of her own cancer. DDT is not and has never been proven as a cancer causing agent and it is perfectly safe to use. The experiments citing egg shell thinning has never been reproduced and bird populations that were claimed to be declining secondary to the deployment of DDT were in fact, in decline prior to the introduction of DDT to the environment. Further, DDT should not have been banned secondary to Carson¿s slander of the chemical, but public hysteria whipped up by environmental activists without any understanding of the situation caused a Federal review. A Federal judge reviewed the evidence and heard the testimony of hundreds of witnesses and concluded that DDT was a safe and effective chemical and did not pose any danger to the environment. The judge was overruled by the EPA head due to political pressure and DDT was banned, resulting in the deaths of millions of people in the third world due to malarial outbreaks. Carson became the first of many scientists to pervert science in favor of a political or personal objective. However, Carson does not stop there. She lies about the endorsement of her position by Dr. Albert Schweitzer in order to lend credibility to her jaundiced position. What I honestly don¿t understand are the glowing reports from those who claim they seek the truth, but turn a blind eye to the lies presented in Carson¿s book. If you think that I am going to recommend that you do not purchase this book, you are mistaken. I urge you to purchase it and read it from cover to cover. Then, research Carson¿s assertions and compare them with the data from scientific sources. You will be disgusted if you have any conscience at all, by what this author has done and the lives she caused to be lost due to her arrogance. In the context of pulling the wool over the public¿s eyes, this text stands out as a masterpiece.
7 out of 27 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 19, 2007
Regardless of how you feel about the environmental movement, Carson's Silent Spring is well worth a read. Whether you agree or disagree with her stance on DDT and other synthetic insecticide use, Carson illustrates well how fragile natural ecosystems can be. No matter what we choose for an occupation, one day we'll end up influencing the world around us. It's probably best to know how to decrease the negative effect we'll have on it.
6 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 29, 2010
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Eventhough "Silent Spring" was written in the early 1960s, it is so well written and the author so brilliant that it reads as though it were written yesterday. Utilizing published research data by the medical community, agricultural experts and similar, Carson writes about bioaccumulation of toxic synthetic chemicals in the environment and how they negatively impact wildlife, agriculture, and humans--as well as the toxins getting into the ground water and food chain--worldwide! Carson also writes about the resistance that "pests" develop within 6 months-6 years to horrific pesticides such as DDT, Lindane, Chlordane, BHC (Benzene Hexachloride) and similar including that the toxins kill the natural predators of the pests leaving superpests. This is the main area of toxicology discussed in her book, but she also mentions other areas too. Carson was supposedly one of the few women with an advanced biology degree during the time of when she wrote "Silent Spring," and she worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. My only criticiem of this book is that as horrible the facts she states, she underestimates them as I suspect to keep her "job." I notice that today some USA government reports written by scientists underestimate, downplay problems (whether it is power lines or nuclear power). In "Silent Spring," Rachel Carson gives a history of pesticides such as in the years the 1800s, and mentions arsenic as one of the main ingredients though another major ingredient back then--lead--lead mixed with arsenic is not mentioned. That is, unless I missed it in my reading of her book. When lead was used then, it was also known that it was a toxin, so for it to be used then could be construed as deliberate pollution intention? Or, did she fear they would label it as a non-major ingredient and not list it? Whatever the case, at least Carson wrote about "arsenate of lead" used. From there, it gets much worse in the 21st Century, and the horrors she writes, she even mentions tank mixing of chemicals--though, you wonder if she also lacked some clarity to keep her "job"...Other than this, her writing style is beautiful as she contrasts the nice nature scenes with the human step backwards in science to create the unseen environmental disasters in a journey-type way. I read it many years ago, and it is current as new sunthetic toxins are created daily and mixed in many areas of the world. Carson was before my time, but her writtings are still about this era of history. Carson tries to get the scientific community into developing environmentally-friendly products, and to make everyone aware of the fragility of the environment. One often hears of the indigenous handlng "pests" by being better stewards of the environment so that there is not an imbalance or infestation--using birds and bats to help combat some insects, that are pests and utilizing medicinal plants as cures. Carson writes of some other "environmentally-friendly" developments, though some of those would be criticized also. This was also a testimony to her brilliance--to also show other developments.
5 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 7, 2005
This book twists and bended scientific research. This sort of subject is commonly used to cover up for the real concern: population control. Condeming millions of people to die each year, of which most are children and pregnant women in third world countries because of the ban on DDT based on such unfounded evidence is nothing but criminal! So feel good that you didnt save any birds or fish because not only does science prove DDT is one of the safest chemicles to ever come in contact with man, it saved millions before it was banned. Only 17 people died of malaria in Sari Lank while it was legal ten years later the death toll after it was banned back up to 53 million in that area alone. If you want to read something, read something so you will become educated and realize this should be a main concern of all and DDT should not be banned, the ban has caused more deaths than Hilter and Stalin combined... heck its more than the entire death toll from world war II. It is sickening why should all these people needlessly die?
5 out of 17 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 4, 2007
Silent Spring is undoubtedly one of the most influencial books of our time. Recently, I encountered a letter to the editor that questioned the assertions of Silent Spring. It seemed incredible that Carson's claims about DDT had been overblown and that the Head of the EPA had banned DDT for political reasons overruling the findings of the EPA's hearing that had compiled over 9,000 pages of testimony from American and international scientific experts. I decided that I had to find out the truth because I found the idea so shocking given what I know about the devastation created by malaria. Among the many things that I came across was a transcript of a speech by Dr. J. Gordon Edward. Dr. Edwards points out many discrepancies in Silent Spring. After reading his review, I ordered a copy of James DeWitt's original article in The Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry from 1956 at a cost of $25.00 so see if Dr. Edward's criticisms were valid. The actual findings of Dr. DeWitt were exactly as described by Dr. Edwards which were substantially different from how they were portrayed by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring. It would seem to suggest that one should check the original research studies cited by Silent Spring. Silent Spring did not examine the use of DDT in controlled interior spraying to prevent malaria but blanket spraying in agricultural applications where the power and persistence of DDT represent an environmental hazard. The book was aimed at the general public and is a call to arms rather than a scholarly, peer reviewed work of original research. What we do know is that DDT remains the most effective method ever discovered in the prevention of malaria. The World Health Organization is currently recommending interior spraying of houses with DDT which their website states can reduce transmission by 90% and poses no environmental hazards to either wildlife or humans. The WHO's website states that a million people a year die of malaria, 30% of these are children. The WHO site shows the impact that malaria has on global poverty. 85% of the victims are in Africa. Silent Spring alerted us to a very real danger from widespread and indescriminate use of a very powerful pesticide. Silent Spring unfortunately overshadowed the fact that DDT is also a remarkable life saving technology if used in a stringently controlled and selective application.
4 out of 8 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 4, 2004
The idea that this book presents some form of proof of anything is ridiculous. This book is purported to be 'The Book' of the environmental establishment in the sense it started the environmental revolution. If what Rachel had to say was so true and so important why didn't she publish her findings in a peer reviewed journal? The findings of this book are on the same par as the 'scientist' who discovered cold fusion...but just couldn't prove it. If anyone had written a journal paper based on the data in this book the paper would have been put in the trash can or used as kendling for a fire. Unfortunately, to many people have been misled to think Rachel actually did scientific research for this book. If the environmental movement is going to go anywhere it must distance itself from baseless claims made by those who wish to just make a name for themselves and focus on factual evidence and likely results based on that evidence...not sheer speculation.
4 out of 18 people found this review helpful.
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Posted November 18, 2002
Nature, a web of energy transfers and the movement of ambitious life, broken down yields unique fibers each their own form and style; an endless matt of differentiation. Fibers defined by an independent characteristic which life and nature depend on. Rachel Carson¿s, Silent Spring, certainly changed the perceptions of all who have read it. Carson carefully wrote Silent Spring in her own soft style which incorporates scientific evidence, theory and reasoning along with the naturalistic biological observations Carson noted herself. Although, blatant evidence shows that chemicals like the: chlorinated hydrocarbons, phosphates and organophosphates mutate genes as radiation does, inhibit functions of the body, promote cancer in all cells, halt the division of cells and pass mutated DNA on to progeny. World wide these chemicals are sprayed at rates which any form of life, including humans, in any part of the world would undoubtedly absorb enough chemical residue whether directly or indirectly for the aforementioned unnatural catastrophes to take place. Carson made it clear that these chemicals have no counterparts in nature, which means nothing exists in the realm of the Earth that could break them down. They are sturdy and last the test of time, some thousands if not millions of years. Because of this, residues enter a food web in many ways. If water is contaminated in one place, water is contaminated everywhere; therefore all living beings have residues in their system and have passed them down the line. Animals not directly hit by the poisons may feed on others that have, or feed on an animal who encountered contaminated food many years ago. The poisons build up in fatty tissues where they become concentrated and sometimes multiplied. Mothers nursing newborn infants and feeding them baby foods which contain insecticidal residues never knew it, still even today. Carson has explained that insecticides, herbicides and pesticides all deserve the classification ¿biocide.¿ She describes them as biocides because these chemicals kill not only what their prefix implies but all life. One could determine this from the mere fact that all these chemicals stemmed from the poisonous gases by the U.S. in World War II. Now that industries have control over their own regulations, life as nature intended will become extinct if not all together. Rachel Carson wrote this book almost forty years ago and realistically, nothing has changed in chemical production, or the ignorant practices of agriculture. Some chemicals have been banned, although some countries still use them and residues travel across the world back and forth. Everyday, chemicals belonging to the three aforementioned groups are newly synthesized and marketed differently. Basically the same chemicals are just physically rearranged on the molecular level. Until people consider other forms of life then their own, as well as read Silent Spring, the world is headed for disaster.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 19, 2011
Silent Spring is a well, detailed analysis and explanation about the effects of many pesticides and chemicals so widely used in the modern wold. This theme was clearly portrayed in the novel, as Carson vividly illustrates a world effected by the dangerous chemicals used today such as DDT. With an immense amount of information to be learned, Carson puts together a environmental masterpiece with the Silent Spring. As a reader I learned the many things effected by these chemicals such as plants, environment, people, and overall our dear Earth. This book is extremely recommended, as it brings forth a whole new side of danger to this environment we,as people, never knew about.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 13, 2010
Rachel Carson's silent spring surprised me when I found that although it constantly discusses DDT it mostly focuses on daughter versions of the poison that are said to be many times more poisonous than DDT. The book constantly points out that DDT is in fact a poison that does its job well which was simply put to kill things (originally focusing on malaria carrying mosquitoes). The major point of the book is that after it killed the insects a few years later the insects would repopulate and another spraying would be necessary to kill them again and then this pattern would continue again, but what was found was that the poison built up as more was continuously added reaching lethal levels that would kill animals that had stored enough of the poison in their bodies from consuming toxic insects. The book's theme is that its beneficial to a certain extent then it becomes unacceptable. What I liked so much about this book was the fact that Rachel didn't so much attack the poison itself but the way in which the poison was used such as massive air drops of the poison and so on. She explained the idea of selective spraying that attacked key areas instead of subjecting all of the wild life to the poison. She also mentioned other methods of accomplishing the task that were given as much thought and detail as her attacks on the use of insecticide including economic benefits and other benefits giving a positive light on the situation rather than constantly droning on about why we shouldn't use the poisons. The book however does tend to lead to assumptions that weren't exactly proven with scientific evidence but more theorized by Rachel such as the dwindling numbers of a certain species of animal in or near a sprayed location. These assumptions only occur a few times in the book but other than that most of the events she mentions are very hard to falsify just by her use of common since and logical thinking. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested on this topic but I would also caution you to keep a very open mind when reading this book as it is very bias against the use of chemicals at all. If you do read the book constantly question which is the better: preserving animal life or delaying the spread of disease. Both have serious consequences but I would like to add a fact from the book which mentions the scientific study that some of these insects do in fact adapt to the chemical bombardments and then require larger dosages of poison in order to kill them off again. Overall it was a very enlightening book for me and I would without a doubt recommend it to anyone interested in the topic. CDotts
2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.shankster
Posted February 9, 2009
This was a nostalgic journey through a world facing nuclear and chemical solutions to its problems more for convenience than real productivity. Without her, we'd all be living next door to a nuclear reactor.
2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.LIZUNDERWOOD
Posted December 14, 2012
Each chapter in the book offers a different environmental concern. A main theme in the book suggests that deadly chemicals are being infiltrated into the atmosphere without consideration or thought of what or who may be effected by them which would be the atmosphere, bodies of water, air, soil, animals, humans, etc. An important point that Carson is trying to get across to the reader is that humans have a moral and ethical dedication to the environment and animals. She is causing the reader to think more deeply of their actions and whether or not it is right to over-consume and use products, which could be deadly to the atmosphere.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.If you are taking any kind of Biology Class that deals with the environment; this is a most read book.
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted May 17, 2005
I really enjoyed this book when I read it over the summer. Very smart read. Absolutely great. Don't miss out!
1 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 21, 2012
The book was very intresting
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted November 27, 2012
Changed the way I think about our pesticide/herbicide use & our industrial food industry. An excellent & informative read.
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Posted September 9, 2012
Definitely something to think about. Rachel Carson had a good idea of what environmentalists want to get across to the public through a book. There was a very big environmental movement because of certain farming practices with using pesticides. Carson had had a big history with Marine Biology and the U.S Fish and Wildlife service. The author was mainly concerned about the pesticides in the environment because of the fruits and vegetables that people ate with a pesticide coating. She also really emphasized how DDT can affect the fat in humans and animals. The data she described in the novel was proof of a large rise in cancer rates which is important in the book because of live accounts. The main idea is that pesticides affect the environment in a major way and for human health. I really liked the idea that she was worried about the rise in cancer rates and how she would want to prevent deaths because of that. Very similar to Erin Brockovich's story in that sense. I disliked the amount of times she described the amount of time in the book it described to the scientific process of the pesticides to an extent that made it get boring. I really DO think that one should read this text because it is important for society because they should understand how the environmentalists might have a connection of what's happening now to 1962, and people should definitely be aware of the cancer rates. The author has a very similar personality as to Erin Brockovich because of the empowering story. Though Erin has a para legal case and sued the company Pacific, Gas, and Electric (Hinkley, CA) for 133.6 million dollars, she was an environmental activist who got the water records and found that hexavalent chromium was distributed to that city. People were getting cancer, tumours, and sicknesses and PG&E didn't support the money for that. Carson had the same idea of what she wanted for people due to this problem. Because of what all fell in place and the major connection to the environmental activist Erin Brockovich I would give this piece 4 stars.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Valentine021495
Posted December 18, 2011
Silent spring (book) is mostly about DDT and the affects of DDT on different species in the world, this book also gives different suggestions of pesticides etc that can be used instead of DDT. If you are a person like me that do not want to talk about death or hear about what is causing you to die then i would not recommend this book personally but after all i found this book really informative.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Sharkbait_95
Posted December 17, 2011
Silent Spring is a book about the effects of pesticides such as DDT. If you are interested in the affects of DDT on plants, animals, and humans, this is a must read. People do not realize that the pestisides do not just get rid of one thing and go away, the pesticides continue up the food chain. It can be a difficult book to get in to as the author uses a lot of statistics and a higher level vocabulary. Carson was very well reasearched on the subject. I found this book very informative and somewhat interesting.
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Posted February 24, 2011
This book created the hippies!
0 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Overview
This is a rigorous presentation of the effects of ...