Rachel Carson

Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-born zoologist and biologist whose landmark book, Silent Spring, is often credited with having launched the global environmental movement. Silent Spring had an immense effect in the United States, where it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy.

Environmental activism and Silent Spring

Starting in the mid-1940s, Carson became concerned about the use of newly invented pesticides, especially DDT. "The more I learned about the use of pesticides, the more appalled I became," she wrote later, explaining her decision to start researching for what would eventually become her most famous work, Silent Spring. "What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important."

Related Topics:
DDT - Silent Spring

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Silent Spring was Carson?s first book focused on the environment, and pesticides in particular. Carson explored the theme of environmental connectedness: although a pesticide is aimed at eliminating one organism, its effects are felt throughout the food chain, and what was intended to poison an insect ends up poisoning larger animals and humans.

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The four-year task of writing Silent Spring began with a letter from the custodian of a Massachusetts bird sanctuary that had been destroyed by aerial spraying of DDT. The letter asked Carson to use her influence with government authorities to begin an investigation into pesticide use. Carson decided it would be more effective to raise the issue in a popular magazine; however, publishers were uninterested, and eventually the project became a book instead.

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Now, as a renowned scientist, she was able to ask for (and receive) the aid of prominent biologists, chemists, pathologists, and entomologists. Silent Spring became a detailed chronicle of the association between wildlife mortality and over-use of pesticides like dieldrin, toxaphene, heptachlor, and DDT, but it was no mere dry recital of the facts and figures: Carson's writing was as lyrical and evocative as it was precise. Even before Silent Spring was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, there was strong opposition to it. As Time Magazine recounted in 1999:

Related Topics:
Pathologist - Entomologist - Dieldrin - Toxaphene - Heptachlor - Houghton Mifflin - 1962 - Time - 1999

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Carson was violently assailed by threats of lawsuits and derision, including suggestions that this meticulous scientist was a "hysterical woman" unqualified to write such a book. A huge counterattack was organized and led by Monsanto, Velsicol, American Cyanamid - indeed, the whole chemical industry - duly supported by the Agriculture Department as well as the more cautious in the media.

Related Topics:
Monsanto - Velsicol - American Cyanamid - Agriculture Department

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Scientists, chemical companies and other critics attacked the data and interpretation in the book, and some went further to attack Carson's scientific credentials. These chemical companies called her unprofessional and even accused of her of being a communist. In addition, many critics repeatedly asserted that she was calling for the elimination of all pesticides, despite the fact that Carson had made it clear she was not advocating the banning or complete withdrawal of helpful pesticides, but was instead encouraging responsible and carefully managed use, with an awareness of the chemicals' impact on the entire ecosystem.

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Houghton Mifflin was pressured to suppress the book, but did not succumb. Silent Spring was positively reviewed by many outside of the agricultural and chemical fields, and it became a runaway best seller both in the USA and overseas. As Time Magazine recalls, within a year or so of publication, "all but the most self-serving of Carson's attackers were backing rapidly toward safer ground. In their ugly campaign to reduce a brave scientist's protest to a matter of public relations, the chemical interests had only increased public awareness.? http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/carson03.html

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Pesticide use became a major public issue, helped by Carson's April 1963 appearance on a CBS TV special with the soft-spoken Carson in debate with a chemical company spokesman. Later that year she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received many other honors and awards, including the Audubon Medal and the Cullen Medal of the American Geographical Society.

Related Topics:
1963 - CBS - American Academy of Arts and Sciences - American Geographical Society

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Carson received hundreds of speaking invitations, but was unable to accept the great majority of them. Her health had been steadily declining since she had been diagnosed with breast cancer halfway through the writing of ?Silent Spring.? In one of her last public appearances, Carson testified before President Kennedy's Science Advisory Committee, which later thoroughly vindicated both Silent Spring and Carson. However, she never did live to see the banning of DDT. She died on 14 April 1964 at the age of fifty-six. In 1980 she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the USA.

Related Topics:
Breast cancer - DDT - 14 April - 1964 - 1980 - Presidential Medal of Freedom

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