Silent Spring

by Rachel Carson

Future historians may well be amazed by our distorted sense of proportion. How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind?

It is not my contention that chemical insecticides must never be used. I do contend that we have put poisonous and biologically potent chemicals indiscriminately into the hands of persons largely or wholly ignorant of their potentials for harm.

If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem.

I contend, furthermore, that we have allowed these chemicals to be used with little or no advance investigation of their effect on soil, water, wildlife, and man himself.

In Greek mythology the sorceress Medea, enraged at being supplanted by a rival for the affections of her husband Jason, presented the new bride with a robe possessing magic properties. The wearer of the robe immediately suffered a violent death. This death-by-indirection now finds its counterpart in what are known as “systemic insecticides.” These are chemicals with extraordinary properties which are used to convert plants or animals into a sort of Medea’s robe by making them actually poisonous. This is done with the purpose of killing insects that may come in contact with them, especially by sucking their juices or blood.

What makes an insecticide a systemic is the ability to permeate all the tissues of a plant or animal and make them toxic.

In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference.

ruddy duck.

In general the effect of all this habitation of the soil is to aerate it and improve both its drainage and the penetration of water throughout the layers of plant growth.

Of all the larger inhabitants of the soil, probably none is more important than the earthworm.

And this is by no means all they do: their burrows aerate the soil, keep it well drained, and aid the penetration of plant roots. The presence of earthworms increases the nitrifying powers of the soil bacteria and decreases putrifaction of the soil. Organic matter is broken down as it passes through the digestive tracts of the worms and the soil is enriched by their excretory products.

This soil community, then, consists of a web of interwoven lives, each in some way related to the others—the living creatures depending on the soil, but the soil in turn a vital element of the earth only so long as this community within it flourishes.

Carrots absorb more insecticide than any other crop studied;

So, perhaps, it appears in the neat rows of figures in the official books; but were the true costs entered, the costs not only in dollars but in the many equally valid debits we shall presently consider, the wholesale broadcasting of chemicals would be seen to be more costly in dollars as well as infinitely damaging to the long-range health of the landscape and to all the varied interests that depend on it.

One scientist has even suggested that some sort of “zoo” should be established to preserve insects, mites, and the like, before their genetic composition is further changed.

The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.

. In the name of progress are we to become victims of our own diabolical means of insect control to provide temporary comfort, only to lose out to destroying insects later on?

By what means will we control new pests, which will attack remaining tree species after the elms are gone, when nature’s safeguards (the birds) have been wiped out by poison?”

It is, moreover, frustrating and exasperating, for it evidently does not serve the purpose this slaughter was intended to serve

The idea that the elms, majestic shade trees though they are, are not “sacred cows” and do not justify an “open end” campaign of destruction against all other forms of life is expressed in other letters.

Who has made the decision that sets in motion these chains of poisonings, this ever-widening wave of death that spreads out, like ripples when a pebble is dropped into a still pond? Who has placed in one pan of the scales the leaves that might have been eaten by the beetles and in the other the pitiful heaps of many-hued feathers, the lifeless remains of the birds that fell before the unselective bludgeon of insecticidal poisons? Who has decided—who has the right to decide—for the countless legions of people who were not consulted that the supreme value is a world without insects, even though it be also a sterile world ungraced by the curving wing of a bird in flight? The decision is that of the authoritarian temporarily entrusted with power; he has made it during a moment of inattention by millions to whom beauty and the ordered world of nature still have a meaning that is deep and imperative.

Despite these precautions, and despite the fact that a sincere effort was apparently made, in at least four major streams almost 100 per cent of the salmon were killed.

The minimum immediate over-all kill throughout the marshes, exclusive of the Indian River shoreline, was 20–30 tons of fishes, or about 1,175,000 fishes, of at least 30 species

Mollusks seemed to be unharmed by dieldrin. Crustaceans were virtually exterminated throughout the area. The entire aquatic crab population was apparently destroyed and the fiddler crabs, all but annihilated, survived temporarily only in patches of marsh evidently missed by the pellets.

In one New Jersey salt marsh sprayed with DDT, the normal population of laughing gulls was decreased by 85 per cent for several weeks, presumably because the birds could not find sufficient food after the spraying.

Although we know that the chemicals have almost certainly undergone change during the long period of transit, we do not know whether the altered chemical is more toxic than the original or less.

In short, the Department of Agriculture embarked on its program without even elementary investigation of what was already known about the chemical to be used—or if it investigated, it ignored the findings. It must also have failed to do preliminary research to discover the minimum amount of the chemical that would accomplish its purpose. After three years of heavy dosages, it abruptly reduced the rate of application of heptachlor from 2 pounds to 1¼ pounds per acre in 1959; later on to ½ pound per acre, applied in two treatments of ¼ pound each, 3 to 6 months apart. An official of the Department explained that “an aggressive methods improvement program” showed the lower rate to be effective. Had this information been acquired before the program was launched, a vast amount of damage could have been avoided and the taxpayers could have been saved a great deal of money.

The Agriculture Department’s mass control program, on the other hand, cost about $3.50 per acre—the most expensive, the most damaging, and the least effective program of all.

If we are troubled by mosquitoes, chiggers, or other insect pests on our persons we have a choice of innumerable lotions, creams, and sprays for application to clothing or skin. Although we are warned that some of these will dissolve varnish, paint, and synthetic fabrics, we are presumably to infer that the human skin is impervious to chemicals.

“We all live under the haunting fear that something may corrupt the environment to the point where man joins the dinosaurs as an obsolete form of life,” says Dr. David Price of the United States Public Health Service. “And what makes these thoughts all the more disturbing is the knowledge that our fate could perhaps be sealed twenty or more years before the development of symptoms.”

We know that even single exposures to these chemicals, if the amount is large enough, can precipitate acute poisoning. But this is not the major problem. The sudden illness or death of farmers, spraymen, pilots, and others exposed to appreciable quantities of pesticides are tragic and should not occur. For the population as a whole, we must be more concerned with the delayed effects of absorbing small amounts of the pesticides that invisibly contaminate our world.

“we may be initiating cancer in the children of today by the addition of chemicals [to food] . . . We will not know, perhaps for a generation or two, what the effects will be.”

The story is interesting from another standpoint, proving that what the public is asked to accept as “safe” today may turn out tomorrow to be extremely dangerous.

The Warburg theory also explains why repeated small doses of a carcinogen are more dangerous under some circumstances than a single large dose. The latter may kill the cells outright, whereas the small doses allow some to survive, though in a damaged condition. These survivors may then develop into cancer cells. This is why there is no “safe” dose of a carcinogen.

The chemical agents of cancer have become entrenched in our world in two ways: first, and ironically, through man’s search for a better and easier way of life; second, because the manufacture and sale of such chemicals has become an accepted part of our economy and our way of life.

To have risked so much in our efforts to mold nature to our satisfaction and yet to have failed in achieving our goal would indeed be the final irony. Yet this, it seems, is our situation. The truth, seldom mentioned but there for anyone to see, is that nature is not so easily molded and that the insects are finding ways to circumvent our chemical attacks on them.

“We move from crisis to crisis, merely trading one problem for another,” said Dr. Pickett.

It is well on the way to realizing the philosophy stated by the Canadian entomologist G. C. Ullyett a decade ago: “We must change our philosophy, abandon our attitude of human superiority and admit that in many cases in natural environments we find ways and means of limiting populations of organisms in a more economical way than we can do it ourselves.”

The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the story—the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting.

Darwin himself could scarcely have found a better example of the operation of natural selection than is provided by the way the mechanism of resistance operates. Out of an original population, the members of which vary greatly in qualities of structure, behavior, or physiology, it is the “tough” insects that survive chemical attack. Spraying kills off the weaklings. The only survivors are insects that have some inherent quality that allows them to escape harm. These are the parents of the new generation, which, by simple inheritance, possesses all the qualities of “toughness” inherent in its forebears. Inevitably it follows that intensive spraying with powerful chemicals only makes worse the problem it is designed to solve. After a few generations, instead of a mixed population of strong and weak insects, there results a population consisting entirely of tough, resistant strains.

Ordinarily resistance takes two or three years to develop, although occasionally it will do so in only one season, or even less. At the other extreme it may take as long as six years.

We need a more high-minded orientation and a deeper insight, which I miss in many researchers. Life is a miracle beyond our comprehension, and we should reverence it even where we have to struggle against it. . . . The resort to weapons such as insecticides to control it is a proof of insufficient knowledge and of an incapacity so to guide the processes of nature that brute force becomes unnecessary. Humbleness is in order; there is no excuse for scientific conceit here.

The choice, after all, is ours to make. If, having endured much, we have at last asserted our “right to know,” and if, knowing, we have concluded that we are being asked to take senseless and frightening risks, then we should no longer accept the counsel of those who tell us that we must fill our world with poisonous chemicals; we should look about and see what other course is open to us.

There is, then, a whole battery of armaments available to the forester who is willing to look for permanent solutions that preserve and strengthen the natural relations in the forest.

Chemical pest control in the forest is at best a stopgap measure bringing no real solution, at worst killing the fishes in the forest streams, bringing on plagues of insects, and destroying the natural controls and those we may be trying to introduce.

By such violent measures, says Dr. Ruppertshofen, “the partnership for life of the forest is entirely being unbalanced, and the catastrophes caused by parasites repeat in shorter and shorter periods . . . We, therefore, have to put an end to these unnatural manipulations brought into the mos...

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.

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.

It was Rachel Carson’s achievement to synthesize this knowledge into a single image that everyone, scientists and the general public alike, could easily understand.

We are still poisoning the air and water and eroding the biosphere, albeit less so than if Rachel Carson had not written. Today we understand better than ever why we must press the effort to save the environment all the way home, true to the mind and spirit of the valiant author of Silent Spring.