The modern environmental movement was established with the release of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962. It was a major literary work that opened the world’s eyes to the dangers of toxic chemical pollutants in the environment. In her book, Rachel Carson cleverly integrated the concerns of urban and industrial reformers with the most pressing ecological issues of the day.
Silent Spring shocked the world by revealing the devastating impact of uncontrolled and unregulated pesticide use. But Rachel Carson also delved into the historical background of pesticides and gave us insight into why pesticides like DDT became so popular, so quickly. She realized that the synthetic chemical industry was a ‘child of World War II’. Wartime concerns about ways to sustain agricultural food production, as well as the continuing threat from insect vectors, prompted the widespread use of DDT in 1945, even before its toxicity was adequately tested. When Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, more than 188 million pounds of DDT had been produced.
But highly visible pollution events were occurring across the United States during the same period. Devastating events that no one could easily ignore. Rachel Carson was unique in that she collected the most graphic events and eloquently described them in her book. Silent Spring opened with a ‘fable of tomorrow’ in which she described a fictional natural community left devastated by a mysterious unknown killer of nature. It was a community where the fruit trees were barren, the birds silenced, and ‘everywhere was a shadow of death’. This could have been any town, any locality, and people realized the message behind the story.
Things have changed since Rachel Carson wrote her book. Now there are new ecological ‘mega-hazards’. But the allegory still describes the world today. Some of the old chemicals still linger in the environment even though they have been banned and now there are some new chemicals that have been added to the list. The nature of the effects of chemical pollutants has also changed. We are now realizing that toxic synthetic chemicals in the form of endocrine disruptors can have long-term effects on living systems.
Silent Spring has made us aware, but changes for the better have been slow. Unlike the famines, epidemics, and natural disasters that plagued pre-industrial society, the dangers of chemical pollutants are of our own making. The frustratingly slow progress toward creating an environment free of toxic synthetic chemicals stems from our inability to determine the scope of the threat. There are now so many chemicals in the environment that researchers can no longer establish scientific certainty of causation for many health-related problems. For example, environmental epidemiologists find it extremely difficult to identify exposure to a specific chemical at a particular time as the cause of a specific disease. While the arguments continue, the negative effects of toxic synthetic chemicals continue to harm us and the environment.
In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson did not want a complete ban on all synthetic chemicals. What she wanted was a more informed and measured approach to the use of chemicals. The fact is that not all chemicals are dangerous. But we need to develop better ways to measure the true impact of the many new synthetic chemicals we are releasing into the environment.
