The Silent Spring

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. 

The Silent Spring and other books on the dangers of pesticides have served to illustrate that great efforts must be taken to prevent the misuse of pesticides and other chemicals. It is this misuse, overuse, and improper disposal that causes many of the problems that have been reported. 

Carson, Rachel, The Silent Spring, Fawcett Greenwich, 1962... 

The Silent Spring was a seminal book in the development of the environmental consciousness which is one of the threads leading to the concept of sustainable development espoused by the London and Melbourne communiques. Another seminal work, referred to by several speakers at the 6th World Congress, was The Limits to Growth — the first report of the Club of Rome. If we concentrate on the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of the predichons in the book we miss its principal message that exponential growth in use of resources and environmental emissions is unsustainable. 

In 1962, Rachel Carson published her classic work. Silent Spring, which revealed that DDT was accumulating in the environment. In particular, high levels of DDT in birds interfered with their calcium metabolism. As a result, the egg shells produced by the birds were too thin to support development of the chick within. It was feared that in spring, when the air should have been filled with bird song, there would be silence. This is the "silent spring" referred to in the title of Carson s book. 

The history of DDT is not a simple one, but it has been further complicated by the rather extreme human reaction that began to tirm against its use (Fig. 4.9). The silent spring envisioned by Carson has never arrived, the frightening conclusiorts of the book were indeed imfoimded (critics say outright erroneous). Carson and her followers also share some responsibility for helping to develop public chemophobia 1.1) and encoitrage a hysterical approach toward chemicals. 

Lntts, R. H. (1985). Chemical Fallout Rachel Carson s Silent Spring, Radioactive Fallout and the Environmental Movement. Environmental Histoiy Review 9 210—225. 

Muller s invention launched both the synthetic pesticide industry that exploited his discovery and the environmental movement that opposed its use. Yet Paul Muller, a shy and determined nature lover, shared many of the same reservations about using DDT in the environment that Rachel Carson popularized in her best seller, Silent Spring, 14 years later. In the 1990s, three decades after DDT was banned in most of the industrialized world, international health workers revived the debate over its use. DDT is a cheap and effective insecticide against malaria, which kills nearly three million people annually, most of them young children and pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa. 

Valerie J. Gunter and Craig K. Harris. Noisy Winter the DDT Controversy in the Years before Silent Spring. Rural Sociology. 63, no. 2 (1998) 179-198. Source for New York Times coverage of DDT. 

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,... 

The publication of Silent Spring (authored by Rachel Carson), which outlined many environmental problems associated with chlorinated pesticides, caused a ban on the use of DDT in 1972. 

Kohn, Gustave K. (1987). Agriculture, pesticides, and the American chemical industry. In Silent Spring revisited. G. J. Marco, R. M. Hollingworth and W. Durham. Washington D. C. American Chemical Society, 164. 

Silent Spring was immensely popular and influential. Carson s work almost single-handedly created modern society s fears about synthetic chemicals in the environment and, among other things, fostered renewed interest in the science of toxicology. It also helped pave the way for the introduction of several major federal environmental laws in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and for the creation of the EPA in 1970. 

Hueper and several colleagues at the NCI were instrumental in drawing public attention to the issue of carcinogens in the workplace and the general environment during the two decades following the work on bladder cancer. Hueper s work and opinions were favorably cited many times by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring. Ms. Carson wrote ... 

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