Silent Spring book

Rachel Carson s book Silent Spring that was published in 1962, was the first popular work to bring the uncontrolled environmental contamination by pesticides to public attention. Well-publicized and well-organized campaigns were mounted in several countries to prohibit the use of DDT and other persistent chlorinated insecticides such as Aldrin and heptachlor. Governments in many developed countries like USA,... 

Perhaps the most well known attack on DDT was Rachel Carson s book Silent Spring, published in 1962. The book popularized DDT scares and claimed that the insecticide would have devastating impacts on bird life, particularly those higher up the food chain, such as eagles and falcons. The publisher s summary on the back of the 1972 edition of Silent Spring says ... 

No single book did more to awaken and alarm the world than Rachel Carson s Silent Spring. It makes no difference that some of the fears she expressed ten years ago have proved groundless or that here and there she may have been wrong in detail. Her case still stands, sometimes with different facts to support it. 

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, Houghton-Mifflin, Boston (1962). Some see this book as triggering environmental consciousness. 

Die Rachel Carson Syndrome. In June 1962 in the middle of one of the world s great cities and far from the farm, there appeared in one of the world s sophisticated journals (The New Yorker), an article that set the agricultural segment of the world on fire. It was written by a lady missionary named Rachel Carson. Later in 1962 it was expanded into a book, Silent Spring (6). She said that the world was suffocating in a poisonous rain of pesticides and she accused the farmers of poisoning her food. The scare she set in motion has spread around... 

If genetic toxicology activists took advantage of Carson s dire predictions of ecological deterioration that she used to introduce readers to the argument of Silent Spring as a way of rousing complacent scientists and policy makers, they likewise adopted the portentous tone with which she ended her book. We... 

Carson, Rachel, 1962, Silent Spring. New York Fawcett Crest Books,... 

Rachel Carson called attention to the abuse and overuse of pesticides in her 1963 book Silent Spring. Decreases in the populations of some wildlife species, especially birds, were attributed to the relatively large concentrations of DDT that were found in them. In 1973 the Environmental Protection Agency banned the use of DDT in the United States. The appropriateness of this action has been hotly debated. 

Despite the social and economic benefits of these compounds, problems developed because some of these compounds, once released, did not degrade in the environment. Because of their environmental persistence, some of these compounds have had unintended consequences for example, DDT caused egg shell thinning and thus affected the reproduction of certain types of birds. This problem was brought to the public s attention by the famous book Silent Spring Perhaps as a result, many of these early pesticides are no longer on the... 

One of the first substances to set off the alarm for this phenomenon was the pesticide DDT in 1962, when Rachel Carson exposed its long range hazards in her book, Silent Spring. DDT has a fish BCF of 54,000 L/kg. 

Although the level of DDD used was low, it accumulated in organisms, each animal in the food chain gaining higher levels, until the animal at the top of the chain, the final predator, acquired levels that were lethal. This worried scientists when it was discovered. The same phenomenon applies to DDT. These examples illustrate what happens when excessive or even just larger than necessary amounts are used. There was already mounting public concern when, in 1963, Rachel Carson s book Silent Spring was published, which documented these occurrences and laid the blame on DDT. It had an enormous impact and the eventual result was that DDT was banned in many countries. 

What does the DDT story illustrate and what lessons can be learnt about the use of chemicals When DDT was first used it was not only very effective but apparently also relatively harmless. This led to it being used in excessive quantities (the more is better fallacy). The inevitable consequence was the death of wildlife and a public outcry which crystallized around the book Silent Spring. This was predicated partly on the fear, If it does this to birds, what is it doing to us DDT is designed to be especially toxic to insects, and other species such as birds are more sensitive than mammals such as humans. The development of a new technique for the detection of DDT which was extremely sensitive allowed traces to be found in many things such as breast milk and food as well as wildlife. It became easy to point the finger at DDT because many birds and other animals had detectable levels of the chemical. But just because a chemical is detectable in an animal does not mean that it causes either death or ill health or that the level is hazardous. 

The debate over DDT is still not over, and there are many toxicologists and other scientists who believe that the case in Silent Spring was probably exaggerated and possibly inaccurate in places. Other books, for example Trashing the Planet by D. L. Ray (1992), have appeared which have put forward alternative views. The detection of minute amounts of DDT in the environment or even in the fat tissue of birds (measured with exquisitely sensitive equipment) may not be relevant to the death of wildlife, that is, the association may be coincidental rather than causal. Because DDT became ubiquitous in the environment many people befieved that they were accumulating it in their bodies and that eventually it would be hazardous. However, the amounts people have accumulated in their... 

In 1962 The Silent Spring, written by Rachel Carson, was published. Carson s book was one of the first that attracted national attention to the problems of toxic chemicals and the effects of these chemicals on the environment. The Silent Spring recounted how the residues of the pesticide DDT could be found throughout the food chain. In aquatic birds, high levels of DDT were associated with reduced fertility. DDT affected the deposition of calcium in avian ovaries, leading to egg shells too thin to survive, thus causing a widespread reduction in many bird species. 

---