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Sounding a toxic wake-up with the publication of her must-read book Silent Spring in 1962, Rachel Carson alerted the public to the chemical dangers all around them. The use and abuse of pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides, Carson posited, were directly responsible for myriad health hazards not only for humans, but all life on the planet. Thus, Silent Spring became a major rallying call for the budding environmental movement. Here’s a quick glimpse into a little bit of what Carson shares in Silent Spring.
“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,” Carson wrote, “it is surely because our forefathers…could conceive of no such problem.”
Carson’s alarming prognosis was not lost on some of the legislators of her day. After appearing at Senate hearings in 1963, Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut became so moved by her testimony, he asked her to autograph his copy of Silent Spring.
“Silent Spring showed that people are not master of nature, but rather part of nature,” says Carson’s biographer, John Henricksson. “It was a revolutionary thought at the time. Today no one seriously questions its truth, but in 1962 it was a direct attack on the values and assumptions of a society.”
We could use some of that "revolutionary thought" stuff today as we now produce pesticides at a rate more than 13,000 times faster than we did in 1962. The Environmental Protection Agency considers 30 percent of all insecticides, 60 percent of all herbicides, and 90 percent of all fungicides to be carcinogenic, yet Americans spend about $7 billion on 21,000 different pesticide products each year.
"Prior to World War II, annual worldwide use of pesticides ran right around zero," says author and environmentalist Derrick Jensen. "By now it's 500 billion tons, increasing every year." As a result, about 860 Americans suffer from pesticide poisoning every single day; that's almost 315,000 cases per year. The worldwide death rate from pesticide poisonings is more than 200,000 per year.
“Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poison on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life?” Carson asked nearly five decades ago. She started the job. It's up to this generation to finish it.
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