Silent Spring, written by Rachel Carson, was released November fifty years ago. This book argued that the pesticide, DDT, was harming the animals and birds in the area that the chemical was being used as well as the humans eating the crops. With the publication of this book, DDT was banned in the United States as well as other pesticides that had a detrimental effect on the environment. Charles Dewberry, a professor at Gutenburg College stated that the book is, “Highly controversial, but may be the most important book in the formation of the environmental movement in the 1960s.” Without Carson’s publication of the book there could have been no actions taken to prevent the harming of the environment through pesticides, and if that never happened, the country’s bird, the bald eagle, who was endangered from the pesticide she was fighting, could have gone extinct.
Criticism against Carson originates with the fact that when DDT was being used incidents of malaria decreased drastically, but when it was banned, malaria accounts increased again. Many people question if the cost of a human life is more than that of an animal or more than the environment.
Throughout Carson’s life she was interested in the environment. She graduated from the Pennsylvania College for Women with a degree in biology. She also studied for a bit with zoology through John Hopkins University. With the degree she went into writing, her other love, for the U.S Bureau of Fisheries. She also submitted many articles for The Baltimore Sun and other random newspapers. It wasn’t until 1950 that she published her first book The Sea Around Us. And her last book written, published in 1962, two years before her death, was Silent Springs, the book she became most well known for.
Although it is uncertain exactly what would have happened had she not published the book, she did influence many political policies created and she saved many animals that could have died out due to pesticides. She is a hero to many and without her the environmental movement might have never began.
