If Rachel Carson were alive to mark the 50th anniversary of her book “Silent Spring,” her head would spin in both wonder and anger. The evidence of her influence literally flies all around us today, because Carson documented how pesticides were polluting the environment and harming birds and other animals. She warned that a “chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life.”
Her reporting led to the eventual ban in the United States of DDT and other compounds that were originally hailed as miracle weapons against disease-bearing or crop-eating insects. That gave us back the bald eagle and the perigrine falcon and returned vibrant aquatic life to ponds and waterways.
Comments
We can adjust to a bad economy, but avoiding poisens under foot, in our foods, clothing, cosmetics...nearly impossible. Thank you Derrick, for this thoughtful article.
It's not just about convenience, about people taking the easy way. It's far more about profits for chemical companies, who poison us for money without our knowledge. They constantly demand deregulation and evade full disclosure of what their products and byproducts do to living beings. They send their representatives to become our government regulators and our legislators. Thier lobbyists write our laws, and their front groups lie to us.
Woods Hole is in MA not ME.