Elizabeth Kolbert: Rachel Carson's book changed the world
The red imported fire ant, or Solenopsis invicta, is about an eighth of an inch long, with a ruddy-brown body covered in tiny hairs. [It comes from South America. In the 1930s it moved to North America.]
... Among those who watched the progress of the ants with horror were officials at the United States Department of Agriculture. In 1957, the department decided to eradicate the insects. Its weapons of choice were the pesticides heptachlor and dieldrin, both of which concentrate as they move up the food chain. In 1958, a million acres were sprayed. Quails, woodcocks, wild turkeys, blackbirds, meadowlarks, opossums, and armadillos all began dying off. The U.S.D.A. responded by denying any problems and continuing to spray.
Among those who watched the progress of the U.S.D.A. with horror was Rachel Carson. She concluded that the department had never investigated the pesticides’ toxicity or, if it had, had ignored the results. (Heptachlor causes liver damage, and dieldrin is a neurotoxin.) The department seemed equally clueless about the basic biology of the ants, which continued to spread even as the chemicals rained down. The war against the fire ants was, in Carson’s words, “an outstanding example of an ill-conceived, badly executed, and thoroughly detrimental experiment in the mass control of insects”; it became one of the inspirations for her book “Silent Spring.”
Carson was born a hundred years ago this Sunday—on May 27, 1907—in the town of Springdale, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh. As a child, she fell in love with the sea, although she had never seen it. She went on to earn a master’s degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins, and became the author of several works about ocean life, including “The Sea Around Us,” which won a National Book Award in 1952. “Silent Spring,” much of which was first published in this magazine, came out in 1962. It was her last work; she died, of breast cancer, eighteen months after it appeared.
As much as any book can, “Silent Spring” changed the world by describing it. An immediate best-seller, the book launched the modern environmental movement, which, in turn, led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the passage of the Clean Air, the Clean Water, and the Endangered Species Acts, and the banning of a long list of pesticides, including dieldrin. Depending on how you look at it, Carson’s centenary couldn’t come at a better time—or a worse one....
Read entire article at New Yorker
... Among those who watched the progress of the ants with horror were officials at the United States Department of Agriculture. In 1957, the department decided to eradicate the insects. Its weapons of choice were the pesticides heptachlor and dieldrin, both of which concentrate as they move up the food chain. In 1958, a million acres were sprayed. Quails, woodcocks, wild turkeys, blackbirds, meadowlarks, opossums, and armadillos all began dying off. The U.S.D.A. responded by denying any problems and continuing to spray.
Among those who watched the progress of the U.S.D.A. with horror was Rachel Carson. She concluded that the department had never investigated the pesticides’ toxicity or, if it had, had ignored the results. (Heptachlor causes liver damage, and dieldrin is a neurotoxin.) The department seemed equally clueless about the basic biology of the ants, which continued to spread even as the chemicals rained down. The war against the fire ants was, in Carson’s words, “an outstanding example of an ill-conceived, badly executed, and thoroughly detrimental experiment in the mass control of insects”; it became one of the inspirations for her book “Silent Spring.”
Carson was born a hundred years ago this Sunday—on May 27, 1907—in the town of Springdale, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh. As a child, she fell in love with the sea, although she had never seen it. She went on to earn a master’s degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins, and became the author of several works about ocean life, including “The Sea Around Us,” which won a National Book Award in 1952. “Silent Spring,” much of which was first published in this magazine, came out in 1962. It was her last work; she died, of breast cancer, eighteen months after it appeared.
As much as any book can, “Silent Spring” changed the world by describing it. An immediate best-seller, the book launched the modern environmental movement, which, in turn, led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the passage of the Clean Air, the Clean Water, and the Endangered Species Acts, and the banning of a long list of pesticides, including dieldrin. Depending on how you look at it, Carson’s centenary couldn’t come at a better time—or a worse one....