In 1962,
The New Yorker magazine serialized substantial portions of the book manuscript
Silent Spring, which critically examined the use of pesticides in controlling insects and the effects of these chemicals on the broad spectrum of life, including wildlife and human health. The author was Rachel Carson, a 54-year-old former employee of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Both her placement of the serialized portions of the book in
The New Yorker and the controversial issues Carson raised won a wide audience for her work, an audience which grew and launched Carson into national visibility when the book was published by Houghton Mifflin later in 1962.
In 17 concise chapters, many of which can stand alone as essays, Carson develops a deceptively simple premise: the use and overuse of synthetic chemicals to control insect pests introduces these chemicals into the air, water, and soil and into the food chain where they poison animals and humans, and disrupt the many intricate interdependencies that make up the delicate natural order. In the concluding paragraph of the book, Carson said:
The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.
Reflecting on the impact of the book when it was first published, David P. Rall, director of NIEHS from 1971 until his retirement in 1990, and the founding director of the National Toxicology Program said, "In many ways, Silent Spring was the beginning of the environmental movement. It was the first serious look at the persistence of environmental chemicals, and one of the most important books of the 1960s."
The "list of principal sources" at the end of the book, an expansive bibliography that spares the reader footnotes in the text, runs a full 55 pages. "Rachel Carson brings real insight to her subject," Rall said. "She does this partly by pulling together material from disparate sources, and also through her elegant writing style, which makes it easy to get educated on this subject."
The value of reading or re-reading Silent Spring today resides in Rall's observation; it remains among the most concise and best-written overviews on the subject of pesticides, eerily fresh after nearly a third of a century, with many of the topics still emerging as issues in science, biology, ecology, and public health. Carson didn't just sell millions of books and raise a stir among chemical manufacturers and politicians, she shaped perceptions in a lasting way.
"Rachel Carson did not just affect my career," said Lynn Goldman, assistant administrator of the Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances, of EPA. "Carson affected an entire generation in their understanding of the environment." Goldman recalls, "I grew up in Galveston, Texas, and when the pelicans began to disappear from Galveston Bay [because of the use of DDT], I felt that loss very strongly. Then in the early 1980s, after DDT had been banned, it was wonderful when the pelicans returned. This was really quite a lesson. If we see these reproductive effects in birds, we might expect to see evidence of Rachel Carson's hypothesis that there are health effects in humans, especially now that we have the tools to better understand the human effects."
Goldman continued, "I'm surprised that I still hear from people who think DDT never harmed the environment. We have a long way to go in understanding pesticides as they are related to the environment. It is amazing how much Rachel Carson understood, even in the early 1960s, about biodiversity and ecosystems and the relationship between pesticides, the environment, and health."
It is not only environmental professionals who have this sense of having been moved and permanently affected by Silent Spring. The book seemed to impact almost everyone who read it and eventually many who hadn't. Said one bookseller who recently sold out of used copies of the book, "I read Silent Spring when I was in my 20s, and for a year or two I thought I was the only environmentalist in the world." Rachel Carson's work still has the power to awaken a profound sense of connection between human beings and the rest of the natural world.
Despite the deep chords of agreement that Carson struck among many of her readers, or perhaps because of them, there were many who disagreed with her, and many of those who disagreed were aggressive and vocal. Some, in the chemical industry, for example, launched counter-attacks: first against Carson's professional credentials and scientific arguments and, in some instances, personal attacks. The mudslinging often served only to further elevate Carson's reputation among her admirers.
An obituary of Carson in the 24 April 1964 issue of Time probably reflected the skepticism of the magazine's mass audience when it stated:
To its author [Silent Spring] was more than a book; it became a crusade. And, despite her scientific training, she rejected facts that weakened her case, while using almost any material, regardless of authenticity, that seemed to support her thesis. Her critics, who included many eminent scientists, objected that the book's exaggerations and emotional tone played on the vague fears of city dwellers, the bulk of the U.S. population, who have little contact with uncontrolled nature and do not know how unpleasantly hostile it generally is. Many passages mentioned cancer, whose cause is still mysterious. Who knows? suggested the book. Could one cause of the disease be pesticides?
The Time article also attributed continuing repercussions from widespread publication of the book: "Laws were proposed on local, state and federal levels to put rigid restrictions on the use of pesticides. Some of them were so sweeping that if they had been passed and enforced, they might very well have caused serious harm. In advanced modern societies, agriculture and public health can no longer manage without chemical pesticides." The irony of this statement is obvious in light of recent scientific evidence of the dangers of pesticides and the series of environmental regulations that continue to limit their use.
At the time, however, criticisms were heaped on the book in an effort to discredit Carson's premise. Robert White-Stevens of American Cyanamid, a spokesperson for the chemical industry, was quoted in the 27 April 1964 issue of Newsweek, saying, "The [book's] major claims . . . are gross distortions of the actual facts, completely unsupported by scientific, experimental evidence, and general practical experience in the field."
The Newsweek article attempted to downplay the impact of the book by questioning Carson's role in precipitating legal and regulatory changes:
It is difficult to isolate the effect of the book, for the case against indiscriminate use of chemicals was already being aired before it was published . . . A Federal study of pesticides was under way, and when the report was published in 1963 it stated that chemicals were potentially very dangerous, and advised that controls must be strict and well enforced. It also pointed out the side Miss Carson chose to ignore: that chemicals are in large part responsible for the increase in U.S. agricultural productivity and have helped control such diseases as malaria.
In rebuttal to these criticisms, Stewart L. Udall, then Secretary of the Interior, defended Carson in a Saturday Review article in the 16 May 1964 issue. Said Udall, "Silent Spring was called a one-sided book. And so it was. She [Carson] did not pause to state the case for the use of poisons on pests, for her antagonists were riding roughshod over the landscape. They had not bothered to state the case for nature. The engines of industry were in action; the benefits of pest control were known--and the case for caution needed dramatic statement if alternatives to misuse were to be pursued."
More than 20 years later, Carson was still catching literary and scientific heat, posthumously. Author and social commentator Edith Efron, in her expansive 1984 critique of environmental sciences, The Apocalyptics, rated Carson as "the first apocalyptic of national importance." Efron's thesis is that the environmental movement has been fraught from the beginning with emotionally and politically skewed thinking that muddles clear scientific reasoning. Efron asserted that Carson promoted the idea that there are relatively few natural carcinogens--arsenic, a few kinds of radioactive rocks, and sunlight--whereas man-made chemicals are the source of an increased incidence of cancer. In response to Carson's statement that humans created their own cancerous universe because only humans can create create cancer-causing substances, Efron concludes:
It is entirely apparent that Carson's analysis of the carcinogen problem is the very analysis that now prevails among American regulators; and it is also apparent that among some at the National Cancer Institute, the concept of cancer as a political disease requiring political solution had been fully crystalized at least two decades ago. But more important yet, Carson's analysis tells us that the apocalyptic approach to cancer rests, fundamentally, on the "axiom" of a largely benevolent nature--a vision of a largely noncarcinogenic Garden of Eden now defiled by the sins of pride and greed.
That Carson's concern about synthetic chemicals hinges in some fundamental way on the significance of natural carcinogens is considered by some as a diversionary argument. Clearly, the discussion of carcinogenicity proceeds along an extensive continuum, with much debate and discussion at every point along the many gradations of opinion. Nonetheless, even those who disagree with Carson recognize the lasting influence of Silent Spring. "The influence of Carson on our era can hardly be overstated," Efron said, " . . . the Toxic Substances Control Act under which we live today is a monument to her thought."
The persistence of Silent Spring as an environmental touchstone has been its accuracy in predicting emergent issues. Early response to Carson's book centered on concerns about effects on wildlife and, in human terms, on environmentally mediated cancer. But Carson specifically mentions human reproductive effects as a possible disease endpoint for environmental exposures, an area of concern that is just now receiving greater scientific attention. "Throughout her book, Rachel Carson reported that pesticides were capable of affecting fertility and even discussed research where animals deliberately exposed to pesticides in the laboratory never reached sexual maturity," said Theodora Colborn, senior scientist with the World Wildlife Fund. "At the time she wrote the book, eggshell thinning and outright mortality among wildlife were common--the results of heavy, unregulated use of pesticides. The high-dose exposure masked the less visible effects that lead to loss of fertility and other physiological functions," Colborn said.
Colborn notes that the human health effects took longer to become apparent. "Among humans, a long-lived species, the evidence of transgenerational effects was only beginning to be played out in the individuals exposed to pesticides in the womb--individuals whose loss of function would not be expressed for another 10 or 20 years as they matured. Carson's book was a documentary on what was evident at that time--cancer and acute toxicity, effects expressed in directly exposed individuals--which preoccupied the minds of millions around the world after the detonation of the first atomic bomb. Unfortunately, those charged with protecting human and wildlife health focused largely on cancer to determine the safety of man-made products. As a result, the delayed, long-term, adverse health effects of pesticides that lead to loss of species were overlooked."
Silent Spring, both as a work of literature and a call for social and scientific scrutiny of the use of pesticides, shows every evidence of enduring into the millennium because Carson presented a premise on the relationship between humans, the use of chemicals, and the environment that has been borne out by science. Despite the emotional dimensions of the subject, proponents of the work credit Carson for adhering to rigorous standards of evidence and relentlessly researching her subject. To many, although her tone was modest and workmanlike, her insights and intuitions were inspired. Whether one agrees with Carson's premise or not, Silent Spring stands among the best read and most revered books on science addressed to a general audience. In the final analysis, even Efron labeled the work "a living classic."
Thomas R. Hawkins
Last Update: July 30, 1998