B io ph ile Issu e 18 - Biophile Magazine

Sounding the AlarmMore than forty years ago, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring foreverchanged our view of the environmentby Bruce Watsonmonth before World War II ended,a relatively unknown writer namedRachel Carson proposed an articlefor Reader's Digest about the effects ofthe pesticide DDT on what she called "thedelicate balance of nature." The shy womanassured the editors that "it's somethingthat really does affect everybody." Theyturned her down.Perhaps they felt a story about pesticideswould be too depressing. Or maybeit was that DDT, then widely used in theUnited States, had likely saved thousandsof American Marines and soldiers bykilling disease-carrying insects on far-offbeachheads, Carson filed the subject awayand went on to write best-selling books onthe wonders of the sea, A dozen years later,she decided to take up the topic again. Thistime would be different.While authors and publishers like tobelieve that a single book can change theworld,few books actually have had such animpact. Yet the day it hit bookstores morethan 40 years ago, Rachel Carson's SilentSpring fuelled a vigorous public debateabout the use of chemicals in our environmentthat has yet to be resolved."Without this book," wrote former VicePresident Al Gore in the introduction toa 1994 reprint of it, "the environmentalmovement might have been long delayed ornever have developed at all," This complex,lyrical volume led not only to the banningof DDT but eventually to the formation ofthe US Environmental Protection Agency."After Silent Spring,people began tothink about the chemicals they werehandling, what they were doing to theenvironment, and what scientists weren'ttelling them," says Carson biographerLinda Lear (Rachel Carson: Witness forNature, 1997). "They began to question thevery direction of technology."Carson had no intention of starting amovement. Working against time followinga diagnosis of cancer, she sounded herwake-up call in the name of songbirds, "IfI kept silent I could never again listen to athrush's song without overwhelming selfreproach,"she wrote. But in the fall of 1962,many scientists and people in the chemicalindustry wished she had kept silent.Growing up in western Pennsylvania,Rachel Louise Carson, known to friendsas Ray, immersed herself in nature andbooks, especially the sea sagas of Melvilleand Conrad. At the Pennsylvania Collegefor Women in the mid-1920s she changedher major from English to Biology, butretained a deep love of writing. Eventuallyshe earned a master's degree in MarineZoology from Johns Hopkins Universityand became a junior aquatic biologist forthe US Bureau of Fisheries in Washington,D.C.Her first book, Under the Sea-Wind,was published in 1941 and sold fewer than2 000 copies. But it put her in contact withscientists who were beginning to ask hardquestions about the fate of the earth.In the late 1940s, while working as publicationseditor for the Fishand WildlifeService, sheRachel Louise Carson (27 May 1907 —14 April1964) was an American marine biologistand nature writer whose landmark book, SilentSpring, is often credited with having launched theglobal environmental movement. Silent Springhad an immense effect in the United States,where it spurred a reversal in national pesticidepolicy. [Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service]began her secondbook, The Sea Around Us. The literarysensation of 1951— topping best-seller listsand winning a National Book Award—itoutlined the latest science informingour understanding of the ocean. Carsonalmost instantly became the nation's unofficialspokesperson for the sea."Heavens!" she wrote a friend after winninganother accolade. "Is this all aboutme—it is really ridiculous!” Sea's successenabled her to become a full-time writerand buy a cottage on the coast of Maine,which would become a sanctuary for therest other life. While she would write anotherbook about the sea, she continued toharbor nagging questions about the effectof pesticides on the land.Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane(DDT) was first used as an insecticide in1959, just a few grains of the white powderwould miraculously wipe out coloniesof mosquito larvae. During World WarII, B-25 bombers sprayed DDT prior toinvasions in the Pacific. After the war,DDT would all but wipe out malaria in thedeveloped world and drastically reduce itelsewhere. (The National Academy of Sciencesreported in 1970 that DDT had savedmore than 500 million lives from malaria.)Paul Muller, the chemist who first turnedit on unsuspecting flies, won a Nobel Prizein 1948 for his work.By the late 1950s, DDT productionhad nearly quintupled from World WarII levels as municipal authorities took tospraying the chemical on American suburbsto eradicate tent caterpillars, gypsymoths and the beetles that carried Dutchelm disease.But the chemical had a disturbing characteristic,it killed indiscriminately. Afterfinding seven dead songbirds in her yard16 Biophile Issue 18