FEATURE
The sound of silence
One hundred years after Rachel Carson’s birth and over 40 years since the publication of Silent
Spring, Jon Evans explores the continuing impact of this seminal book on both the environment
and the crop protection industry
T
he furore over Rachel Carson’s Silent
Spring and its warnings about the
perils of widespread pesticide use
began even before the book was
published. Following the serialisation of a
condensed version in the New Yorker in July
1962, the pesticide manufacturer Velsicol
Chemical Corporation tried to prevent Silent
Spring from being published, citing “inaccurate
and disparaging statements” about the
insecticides chlordane and heptachlor. But on
confirming the accuracy of these statements
with an independent toxicologist, the book’s
publisher, Houghton Mifflin, went ahead as
planned, releasing Silent Spring in September.
Almost immediately, the US chemical industry
began a massive “damage limitation”
exercise. This included the Manufacturing
Chemists Association distributing monthly
feature stories to the news media stressing
the positive side of chemical use and the
National Agricultural Chemicals Association
sending out thousands of copies of critical
reviews of Silent Spring. It was even alleged
that certain chemical companies were
threatening to stop advertising in gardening
magazines and newspaper supplements that
gave favourable coverage to Silent Spring.
Carson was attacked for being “hysterical” and
a “fanatic”, while Silent Spring was denounced
as “hogwash”. According to Robert White-
Stevens, then assistant director of research
and development in the agricultural division of
the American Cyanamid Company: “The major
claims of Miss Rachel Carson’s book, Silent
Spring, are gross distortions of the actual
Rachel Carson
facts, completely unsupported by scientific,
experimental evidence, and general practical College for Women, and her writing style This was combined with a heightened concern
experience in the field.” could be quite “poetic”. While this style about mankind’s effects on nature that could
helped her to explain scientific concepts in merge into a seeming distrust of technological
Looking through the book today, it’s easy to a clear and accessible way, as shown in her advance.
see where Silent Spring leaves itself open to earlier best-selling books about the ocean
attack. Carson was an unpublished poet, who – The Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea Both these traits were most in evidence in
originally studied English at Pennsylvania – it could also lead to certain flights of fancy. Silent Spring’s infamous opening chapter,
September 2007 • www.agrow.com
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