FEATURE
entitled A Fable for Tomorrow, in which the Montrose Chemical Corporation, were able with little or no advance investigation of
Carson imagined a hypothetical, picture-book to accuse Carson of writing not “as a scientist their effect on soil, water, wildlife, and man
US town laid to waste by rampant pesticide but rather as a fanatic defender of the cult of himself.”
use. “Then a strange blight crept over the the balance of nature”.
area and everything began to change. Some But the US chemical industry was right to
evil spell had settled on the community: Beneath the poetic writing style, however, be concerned about the impact of Silent
mysterious maladies swept the flocks of is a well-researched, scholarly book, which Spring. For a start, it was a huge hit, selling
chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and marshals information from a wide variety of over 100,000 copies before the end of the
died. Everywhere was a shadow of death.” different studies and researchers to provide year (with total sales now over 2 million).
a first glimpse of the damaging effect of It was definitely the right book at the right
But they are also apparent throughout the indiscriminate pesticide use. Conducting the time, with the general public just beginning
rest of the book. For example, the second background research for the book took Carson to become concerned about the unintended
over four years and she sent draft versions of effects of synthetic chemicals.
the chapters to various scientific experts for
checking. This meant that, despite the book’s More importantly for the chemical industry,
supposed lack of experimental support, her it motivated politicians to start asking
critics had a tougher time taking her to task questions about pesticides. The first result of
over the science. this came in October 1962, when a special
panel of President Kennedy’s Science Advisory
Indeed, Silent Spring received broadly positive Committee started an inquiry into pesticide
reviews from many prominent academic use. Rachel Carson was one of the experts
scientists. For example, LaMont Cole, then who gave evidence before the committee,
professor of ecology at Cornell University, despite the fact that she was seriously ill with
reviewed the book for Scientific American and breast cancer at the time.
concluded: “Errors of fact are so infrequent,
trivial and irrelevant to the main theme that it The committee published its report in May
An article on the birth of the
would be ungallant to dwell on them.” 1963 and agreed with many of the points
and recommendations made by Carson in
EPA, which appeared in
Carson’s critics also seemed unable to accept Silent Spring. It argued that pesticides were
the EPA Journal in 1985 that she wasn’t calling for all pesticides to be
necessary to maintain the quality of the
(and is still available on
banned, thereby handing victory over to the nation’s food and health, but warned against
insects. ‘The real threat, then, to the survival their indiscriminate use. It also called for more
the EPA’s web site), cites
of man is not chemical but biological, in the research to be conducted into the potential
Silent Spring as the primary
shape of hordes of insects that can denude health hazards of pesticides and for an orderly
inspiration behind the
our forests, sweep over our crop lands, ravage reduction in the use of persistent pesticides.
EPA’s founding.
our food supply and leave in their wake a The modern regulation of pesticides in the US
train of destitution and hunger, conveying can be traced back to this report.
to an undernourished population the major
disease scourges of mankind,” predicted Just over seven years later, President Nixon
White-Stevens. established the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), which consolidated all the
But Carson was simply calling for an end to federal government’s environment-related
indiscriminate pesticide spraying, as had been research, monitoring, standard-setting and
used by the US Department of Agriculture enforcement activities into a single body.
in its controversial programme to eradicate An article on the birth of the EPA, which
the fire ant in the late 1950s, and for more appeared in the EPA Journal in 1985 (and is
research to be conducted into the effects of still available on the EPA’s web site), cites
pesticides on non-target organisms and into Silent Spring as the primary inspiration
developing alternative control methods. behind the EPA’s founding. It is also credited
with establishing the modern environmental
“It is not my contention that chemical movement and pushing environmental
chapter contains the following sentence – “The insecticides must never be used,” she said in concerns to the top of the political agenda,
most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the Silent Spring. “I do contend that we have put where they remain to this day.
environment is the contamination of air, earth, poisonous and biologically potent chemicals
rivers, and sea with dangerous and even indiscriminately into the hands of persons Two years after its founding, the EPA
lethal materials” – which kind of gives the largely or wholly ignorant of their potentials banned the insecticide DDT, which was one
game away on where her sympathies lie. As a for harm … I contend, furthermore, that we of the main pesticides highlighted in Silent
result, critics such as P. Rothberg, president of have allowed these chemicals to be used Spring. Over the next few years, DDT was
www.agrow.com  •   September 2007 
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