26 May 2008
A Quiet Woman Whose Book Spoke Loudly
Rachel Carson, one of the most influential women in modern America
(The following article is taken from the U.S. Department of State publication, Rachel Carson.)
A Quiet Woman Whose Book Spoke Loudly
By Phyllis McIntosh
A shy, unassuming scientist and former civil servant, Rachel Carson seemed an unlikely candidate to become one of the most influential women in modern America. But Carson had two lifelong passions – a love of nature and a love of writing – that compelled her in 1962 to publish Silent Spring, the book that awakened environmental consciousness in the American public and led to an unprecedented national effort to safeguard the natural world from chemical destruction.
As a trained scientist, Carson meticulously documented her conclusions about the long-term dangers of pesticides; as a skilled writer, she communicated those dangers in language the average reader could understand.
A Born Naturalist
Rachel Carson was born 100 years ago in a small town in western Pennsylvania. Even though she grew up far from the seacoast, she recalled that even as a child she felt "absolute fascination for every thing related to the ocean." She also was determined that one day she would be a writer.
As a student at Pennsylvania College for Women, she majored in English until her junior year, when she switched to biology – a bold move at a time when few women entered the sciences. She went on to graduate cum laude from Johns Hopkins University with a master's degree in marine biology in 1932. While teaching zoology at the University of Maryland, Carson spent summers studying at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, where she saw her beloved sea for the first time.
She began her civil service career writing science radio scripts for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries and in 1936 was offered a job as an aquatic biologist, only the second women ever hired by the agency in a professional position. Carson spent 15 years in the federal government writing educational materials about conservation and natural resources and editing scientific articles. By the time she retired in 1952, she had risen to editor-in-chief of publications for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
While with the government, Carson continued to write independently about her love of the sea. In 1941, she published her first book, Under the Sea-Wind, a naturalist's look at the struggle for life in the sea and along its shores. A second book, The Sea Around Us, which described the processes that formed the earth and the oceans, became a best-seller and won her worldwide acclaim.
The financial success of her books made it possible for Carson to retire from the government and build a cottage on the coast of Maine. Continuing her research on the sea, she once boarded a trawler and sailed to the rough waters of the Georges Banks fishing grounds off the Massachusetts coast. Her third book, The Edge of the Sea, a guide to marine life, was published in 1955.
A Crusading Scientist
Although most of her writing focused on the sea, Carson had long been concerned about environmental damage from overuse of chemical pesticides and as early as 1945 had tried unsuccessfully to sell an article about pesticide testing to Reader's Digest magazine. In 1958, with evidence mounting about the hazards of DDT and other pesticides, Carson was moved by a letter she received from friends on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, describing how aerial spraying of DDT had killed numerous birds on their private land.
She resolved to alert the public to the dangers and, once again unable to sell a magazine article on the subject, set to work on Silent Spring. Over the next four years, she meticulously researched the book and, anticipating sharp criticism from chemical companies, compiled 55 pages of sources and an extensive list of experts who had reviewed her manuscript.
When the first installment of the book appeared in the New Yorker magazine in summer 1962, the chemical industry, as expected, decried her as a "hysterical woman." The book quickly found favor with the public, however, especially after a major television network aired a special about pesticides that featured an interview with a calm, reasoned Carson.
In addition to TV appearances and interviews, Carson testified before several congressional committees and called for establishment of a "Pesticide Commission" or some type of regulatory agency to protect people and the environment from chemical hazards.
Lasting Legacy
Seven years later, in 1970, Congress created the Environmental Protection Agency, a direct result of the environmental movement sparked by Silent Spring. In 1972, the government banned DDT, the pesticide that had helped push America's national symbol, the bald eagle, and other birds to the brink of extinction.
Few people knew at the time that while Rachel Carson was writing Silent Spring and enduring the controversy that followed its publication, she was waging a losing battle against breast cancer. In April 1964, at age 56, she died at her home in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C., never knowing of the landmark legislation that resulted from her work.
"Now I can believe that I have at least helped a little," she had written modestly to a friend in 1962. "It would be unrealistic to believe one book could bring a complete change." She could not have been more wrong. As Carson biographer Linda Lear has noted: "In the face of personal attack, and in spite of being gravely ill, Rachel Carson provided a compelling example of the power of the single individual to bring about change."
[Phyllis McIntosh, a former contributing editor of National Wildlife magazine, frequently writes about health issues.]
