]BY

RACH
EL
CARS
ON

Unde
r the
Sea-
Wind

The Sea
Around
Us

The
Edge
ofthe
Sea

Silent

SILENT
Spring

SPRING
F O RT I ETH ANNIVER SARY ED ITI O N
 INTRODUCTION

Introduction
by Linda Lear

HEADLINES IN THE Nav York Times in July 1962 captured the

national "Silent Spring is now noisy summer." In the few
months between the New Yorker's of Silent
Spring in June and its publication in book form that September,
Rachel Carson's alarm touched off a national debate on the use of
chemical pesticides, the responsibility of science, and the its of

RACHEL technological progress. I'Vhen Carson died barely eighteen months

later in the spring of 1964, at the age of fifty-six, she had set in
modon a course of events that would result in a ban on the domestic

CARSON production of DDT and the creation of a grass-roots movement

demanding protection of the environment through state and federal
regulation. Carson's writing initiated a formation in the
Introduction by Linda reladonship between humans and the natural world and stirred an
Lear awakening of public environmental consciousness.
It is hard to remember the cultural climate that greeted Silent
Afterword by Spring and to understand the fury that was launched against its
quietly author. Carson's thesis that we were subjecting
Edward O. Wilson
ourselves to slow poisoning by the misuse of chemical pesticides that
polluted the environment may seem like common currency now, but
in 1962 Silent Spring contained the kernel of social revolution.
Carson wrote at a time of new affluence and intense social
conformity. The cold war, with its climate of suspicion and
intolerance, was at its zenith. The chemical industry, one of the chief
beneficiaries of postwar technology, was also one of the chief authors
A MARINER BOOK of the nation's prosperity. DDT enabled the conquest of insect pests in
HOUGHTON agriculture and of ancient insectborne disease just as surely as the
MIFFLIN atomic bomb desu•oyed Amer-
COMPANY xi
Boston
ica's military enemies and dramatically altered the balance of power
York
between humans and nature. The public endowed chemists, at work
in their starched white coats in remote laboratories, with almost
 INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
divine wisdom. The results wrote for the public rather than for a narrow scientific audience. For
of their labors anyone else, such independence would have been an enormous
were gilded with the detriment. But by the time Silent Spring was published, Carson's
presumption of outsider status had become a distinct advantage. As the science
establishment would discover, it was impossible to dismiss her.
beneficence. In postwar
America, science was god, Rachel Carson first discovered nature in the company of her mother,
and science was male. a devotee of the nature study movement. She wandered the banks of
the Allegheny River in the pristine village of Springdale,
Carson was an outsider
Pennsylvania, just north of Pittsburgh, observing the wildlife and
who had never been part of
plants around her and particularly curious about the habits of birds.
the scien
establishment, first Her childhood, though isolated by poverty and family turmoil, was
because she was a woman not lonely. She loved to read and displayed an obvious talent for
but also because her writing, publishing her first story in a children's literary magazine at
chosen field, biology, was the age of ten. By the time she entered Pennsylvania College for
held in low esteem in the Women (now Chatham College), she had read widely in the English
nuclear age. Her career Romantic tradidon and had articulated a personal sense of mission,
path was nonüditional; she her "vision splendid." A dynamic female zoology professor
had no academic expanded her intellectual horizons by urging her to take the daring
affiliation, no institutional step of majoring in biology rather than English. In doing so, Carson
voice. She deliberately discovered that science not only engaged her mind but gave her
"something to write about."
xiii
xii
She decided to pursue a career in science, aware that in the 1930spollution at a formative period in her life. During her adoles-

there were few opportunities for women. cence the second area wave into of the the iron industrial and steel revolution capital of the was
Westernturning Scholarships allowed her to study at Woods Hole Biological the Pittsburgh
Laboratory, where she fell in love with the sea, and at Johns world. The little town of Springdale, sandwiched between two Hopkins
University, where she was isolated, one of a handful ofhuge coal-fired electric plants, was transformed into a grimy

women in marine biology. She had no mentors and no money to wasteland, industrial its air waste. fouled Carson by chemical could not
emissions, wait to its escape. river pollutedShe obcontinue in graduate school after completing an M.A. in zoology by served that the captains
 INTRODUCTION
of industry took no notice of the defilein 1932. Along the way she worked as a laboratory assistant in the school of public health, where she
was lucky enough to re- ment of her hometown and no responsibility for it. The expericeive some ffaining in experimental genetics. As
employment ence made her forever suspicious of promises of "better living opportunities in science dwindled, she began writing articles
through chemistry*' and of claims that technology would create a about the natural history of Chesapeake Bay for the Baltimore progressively
brighter future. writer of radio Sun. Although these were years of financial and emotional strug- In 1936 ocean Carson life landed for the a
federal job as Bureau a part-time of Fisheries in Baltigle, Carson realized that she did not have to choose between sci- scripts on ence and
writing, that she had the talent to do both. more. By night she of wrote the oyster freelance beds of ardcles the Chesapeake for the Sun by
describ-indusFrom childhood on, Carson was interested in the long history ing the polludon of the earth, in ic patterns and rhythms, its ancient
seas, its evolv- u•ial runoff; she urged changes in oyster seeding and dredging ing life forms. She was an ecologist—fascinated by
intersecdons practices She and signed political her regulation "R. of L. the Carson," effluents hoping pouring that read-into

and connections but always aware of the whole— before that per- the ers would bay. assume that the writer was male and thus take her
scispective was accorded scholarly legidmacy. A fossil shell she found while digging in the hills above the Allegheny as a little girl ence
[Link] Carson became a junior aquatic biologist for the prompted questions about die creatures of the oceans that had A year once
covered area. At Johns Hopkins, an experiment with Bureau of Fisheries, a slow but one steady of only advance two professional through the
women ranks of there,the changes in the salinity of water in an eel tank prompted her to and began study the life cycle of those ancient fish
that migrate from conti- agency, which became talents the were U.S. quickly Fish and recognized, Wildlife and Service she wasin nental
rivers to the Sargasso Sea. The desire to understand the 1939. Her to literary edit other scientists' field reports, a task she turned sea from a
nonhuman led to her first book, Under the assigned
Sea-Wind, which featured a common sea bird, the sanderling, into an opportunity to broaden her knowledge, deepen whose life cycle, driven
by ancestral instincts, the rhythms of the her connection with nature, and observe the making of science tides, and the search for food,
involves an arduous journey from policy. By 1949 Carson was editor in chief of all the agency's Patagonia to the Arcdc Circle. From the
outset Carson acknowl- publications, writing her own distinguished series on the new edged her "kinship with other forms of life" and always
wrote to U.S wildlife refuge system and in interagency conimpress that relationship on her readers. ferences on the latest
developments in science and technology.
Carson was confronted with the problem of environmental Her government responsibilities slowed the pace of her own
 INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
xiv
hubris, a product of ignorance and greed that she felt
It took her ten years to synthesize the latest research on compelled to bear wimess against. She insisted that
oceanography, but her perseverance paid off. She became an what science conceived and technology made possible must
overnight literary celebrity when The Sea Around Us was first first be judged for its safety and benefit to the "whole stream of
serialized in The New Yorker in 1951. The book won many life." "There would be no peace for me, she wrote to a friend,
awards, including the Nadonal Book Award for nonficdon, and "if I kept silent."
Carson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Silent Spring, the product of her unres.t, deliberately
Letters. She was lauded not only for her expertise and challenged the wisdom of a government that allowed toxic
synthesis of wide-ranging material but also for her lyrical, chemicals to be put into the environment before knowing the
poetic voice. The Sea Around Us and its best-selling successor, long-term consequences of their use. Writing in language that
The Edge ofthe Sea, made Rachel Carson the foremost science everyone could understand and cleverly using the public's
writer in America. She understood that there was a deep need knowledge of atomic fallout as a reference point, Carson
for writers who could report on and interpret the natural world. described how chlorinated hydrocarbons and organic
Readers around the world found comfort in her clear phosphorus insecticides altered the cellular processes of plans,
explanations of complex science, her description of the animals, and, by implicadon, humans. Science and technology,
creadon of the seas, and her obvious love of the wonders of she charged, had become the handmaidens of the chemical
nature. Hers was a a-usted voice in a world riddled by industry's rush for profits and control of markets. Rather than
uncertainty. protecting the public from potential harm, the government not
W7henever she spoke in public, however, she took of only gave its approval to these new producs but did so without
ominous new Eends. "Intoxicated with a sense of his own establishing any mechanism of accountability. Carson
power," she wrote, "[mankind] seems to be going farther and questioned the moral right of government to leave its citizens
farther into more experiments for the destruction of himself unprotected from substances they could neither physically
and his world." Technology, she feared, was moving on a avoid nor publicly question. Such callous arrogance could end
faster trajectory than manHnd's sense of moral responsibility. only in the desffuction of the living world. "Can anyone
In 1945 she ü'ied to interest Reader's Digest in the alarming believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on
evidence of environmental damage from the widespread use the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life?" she
of the new synthetic chemical DDT and other asked. "They should not be called 'insecticides' but 'biocides."'
agricultural pesticides. By 1957 Carson believed that these In Silent Spring, and later in testimony before a
chemicals were potentially harmful to the long-term health of congressional committee, Carson asserted that one of the most
the whole biota. The pollution of the environment by the basic human rights must surely be the "right of the citizen to be
profligate use of toxic chemicals was the ultimate act of human secure in his own home against the inu•usion of poisons
applied by other persons." Through ignorance, greed, and
 INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
negligence, government had allowed "poisonous and to take responsibility for or achowledge evidence of damage.
biologically potent chemicals" to fall "indiscriminately into the Carson challenged such moral vacuity. "The obligation to
hands of persons largely or wholly ignorant of their potentials endure," she wrote, "gives us the right to k10W."
for harm." When the public protested, it was "fed little In Carson's view, the postwar culture of science that arro-
tranquillizing pills of half-auth" by a government that refused
xvii
gantly claimed dominion over nature was the philosophic root of has been slow to acknowledge this aspect of Carson's work, her the
problem. Human beings, she insisted, were not in conä•ol of concept of the ecology of the human body may well prove to be nature but
simply one of its parts: the survival of one part de- one of her most lasting contributions.
pended upon the health of all. She protested the "contamination In 1962, however, the multimillion-dollar industrial chemical of man's total
environment" with substances that accumulate in industry was not about to allow a former government editor, a the tissues of plants, animals,
and humans and have the potential female scientist without a Ph.D. or an affiliation, to alter the genedc structure of organisms.
hown only for her lyrical books on the sea, to undermine public Carson argued that the human body was permeable and, as confidence in its
products or to question its integrity. It was clear such, vulnerable to toxic substances in the [Link]. Levels to the industry that Rachel
Carson was a hysterical woman of exposure could not be conü•olled, and scientisß could not ac- whose alarming view of the future could be
ignored or, if necescurately predict the long-term effects of bioaccumulation in the sary, suppressed. She was a "bird and bunny lover," a
woman cells or the impact of such a mixture of chemicals on human who kept cats and was therefore clearly suspect. She was a rohealth. She
categorically rejected the notion proposed by indus- mantic "spinster" who was simply overwrought about genetics. ay that there were human
"thresholds" for such poisons, as well In short, Carson was a woman out of She had overas its corollary, that the human body had
"assimilative capacities" stepped the bounds of her gender and her science. But just in that rendered the poisons harmless. In one of the most
confro- case her claims did gain an audience, the industry spent a quarter versial parts of her book, Carson presented evidence that some of a
million dollars to discredit her research and malign her charhuman cancers were linked to pesticide exposure. That evidence acter. In the end,
the worst they could say was that she had told and is subsequent elaboration by many other researchers con- only one side of the story and
had based her argument on unverdnue to fuel one of the most challenging and acrimonious de- ifiable case studies.
bates within the scienüfic and environmental communides. There is another, private side to the controversy over Silent Carson's concept of
the ecology of the human body was a Spring. Unbelmown to her detractors in government and indusmajor departure in our thinking about the
relationship between ay, Carson was fighting a far more powerful enemy than corpohumans and the natural environment. It had enormous
conse- rate oun•age: a rapidly metastasizing breast cancer. The miracle quences for our understanding of human health as well as our at- is
that she lived to complete the book at all, enduring a "catatitudes toward environmental risk. Silent Spring proved that our logue of illnesses,"
as she called it. She was immune to the chembodies are not boundaries. Chemical corruption of the globe af- ical industry's efforts to malign
her; rather, her energies were fofects us from conception to death. Like the rest of nature, we are cused on the challenge of survival in order
 INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
to bear witness to the vulnerable to pesticides; we too are permeable. All forms of life tuth as she saw it. She intended to disturb and disrupt,
and she are more alike than different. did so with dignity and deliberation.
Carson believed that human health would ultimately reflect After Silent Spring caught the of President John F. the environment's ills.
Inevitably this idea has changed our re- Kennedy, federal and state investigations were launched into sponse to nature, to science, and to the
technologies that devise the validity of Carson's claims. Communities that had been suband deliver contamination. Although the scientific
community jected to aerial spraying of pesticides against their wishes began to organize on a grass-roots level against the continuation of
tionship to the natural world. We are a nation debating the toxic polludon. Legislation was readied at all governmental lev- questions it
raised, still unresolved as to how to act for the comels to defend against a new kind of invisible fallout. The scien- mon good, how to achieve
environmental justice. In arguing that tists who had claimed a "holy grail" of knowledge were forced to public health and the environrnent,
human and natural, are inadmit a vast ignorance. While Carson knew that one book could separable, Rachel Carson insisted that the role of
the expert had not alter the dynamic of the capitalist system, an environmental to be limited by democraüc access and must include public
demovement grew from her challenge, led by a public that de- bate about the risks of hazardous technologies. She hew then, manded that
science and government be held accountable. Car- as we have learned since, that scientific evidence by its very nason remains an example of
what one committed individual can ture is incomplete and scienüsts will inevitably disagree on what do to change the direction of society.
She was a revolutionary constitutes certain proof of harm. It is difficult to make public spokesperson for the rights of all life. She dared to
speak out and policy in such cases when government's obligation to protect is confront the issue of the destruction of nature and to frame it as
by the nature of science iælf.
a debate over the quality of all life. Rachel Carson left us a legacy that not only embraces the fuRachel Carson knew before she died that her
work had made a ture of life, in which she believed so fervently, but sustains the difference. She was honored by medals and awards, and
posthu- human spirit. She confronted us with the chemical corruption of mously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981. But the
globe and called on us to regulate our appetites—a truly revshe also hew that the issues she had raised would not be solved olutionary stance
—for our self-preservaüon. "It seems reasonquickly or easily and åat affluent societies are slow to sacrifice able to believe," she wrote, "that
the more clearly we can focus for the good of the whole. It was not until six years after Carson's our attention on the wonders and of the
universe about death that concerned Americans celebrated the first Earth Day us, the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race.
and that Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not Act establishing
the Environmental Agency as a exist side by side with a lust for " buffer against our own handiwork. The
production of Wonder and humility are just some of the gifts of Silent DDT was banned, but not its export, ensuring that
the pollution Spring. They remind us that we, like all other living creatures, of the earth's atmosphere, oceans, streams, and wildlife would are
part of the vast ecosystems of the earth, part of the whole unabated. DDT is found in the livers of birds and fish stream of life. This is
a book to relish: not for the dark side of on every oceanic island on the planet and in the breast milk of human nature, but for the promise of
life's possibility. every mother. In spite of decades of environmental protest and awareness, and in spite of Rachel Carson's apocalyptic call
 INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
alerting Americans to the problem of toxic chemicals, reducdon of the use of pesticides has been one of the major policy failures of the
environmental era. Global contamination is a fact of modern life.
Silent Spring compels each generation to reevaluate its rela-
2 SILENT SPRING A FABLE FOR TOMORROW 3 year. Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty, among the blossoms, so there
was no pollination and there where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the would be no fruit.
seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with countryside was, in fact,
famous for the abundance and variety browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire. of its bird life, and when the flood of
migrants was pouring These, too, were silent, deserted by all living things. Even the through in spring and fall people traveled from great
distances streams were now lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for to observe them. Others came to fish the streams, which flowed all
the fish had died.
clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where In the gutters under the eaves and between the shingles of trout lay. So it had
been from the days many years ago when the roofs, a white granular powder still showed a few patches; the first settlers raised their houses,
sank their wells, and built some weeks before it had fallen like snow upon the roofs and their barns. the lawns, the fields and streams.
Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of began to change. Some
evil spell had settled on the community: new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themmysterious maladies swept the flocks of
chickens; the cattle and selves. sheep sickened and died. Everywhere •was a shadow of death.
The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In This town does not actually exist, but it might easily have the town the doctors
had become more and more puzzled by a thousand counterparts in America or elsewhere in the world. new kinds of sickness appearing
among their paüents. There I know of no community that has experienced all the misforhad been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not
only among tunes I describe. Yet every one of these disasters has actually adults but even among children, who would be stricken sud-
happened somewhere, and many real communities have already denly while at play and die within a few hours. suffered a substantial number
of them. A grim specter has There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example — crept upon us almost unnoticed, and this imagined
tragedy may where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled easily become a stark reality we all shall know.
and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were de- What has already silenced the voices of spring in countless serted. The few
birds seen anywhere were moribund; they towns in America? This book is an attempt to explain. trembled violently and could not fly. It was
a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of
other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.
On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched. The farmers
complained that they were unable to raise any pigs — the litters were
small and the young survived only a few days. The apple trees were
coming into bloom but no bees droned
 THE HISTORY OF LIFE on earth has been a history of
interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large ex
tent, the physical form and the habits of the earth's vegetation and its
animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the
whole span of earthly dme, the opposite effect, in which life actually

modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only within the
moment of time represented by the present century has one species —
man — acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.
During the past quarter century this power has not only increased to
one of disturbing magnitude but it has changed
 SILENT SPRING
6 in character. The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the THE OBLIGATION TO ENDURE 7 The rapidity
environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with of change and the speed with which new situations are created
dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most follow the impetuous and heedless pace of man rather than the
part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world deliberate pace of nature. Radiation is no longer merely the
that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part background radiation of rocks, the bombardment of cosmic
irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, rays-the ultraviolet of the sun that have existed before there was
chemicals are the sinister and littlerecognized partners of radiation in any life on earth; radiation is now the unnatural creation of
changing the very nature of the world — the very nature of its life. man's tampering with the atom. The chemicals to which life is
Strontium 90, released through nuclear explosions into the air, comes asked to make its adjustment are no longer merely the calcium
to earth in rain or drifts down as fallout, lodges in soil, enters into the and silica and copper and all the rest of the minerals washed out
grass or corn or wheat grown there, and in time takes up its abode in of the rocks and carried in rivers to the sea; they are the
the bones of a human being, there to remain until his death. synthetic creations of man's inventive mind, brewed in his
Similarly, chemicals sprayed on croplands or forests or gardens lie laboratories, and having no counterparts in nature.
long in soil, entering into living organisms, passing from one to To adjust to these chemicals would require time on the scale
another in a chain of poisoning and death. Or they pass mysteriously that is nature's; it would require not merely the years of a man's
by underground streams until they emerge and, through the alchemy life but the life of generations. And even this, were it by some
of air and sunlight, combine into new forms that kill vegetation, miracle possible, would be futile, for the new chemicals come
sicken cattle, and work unknown harm on those who drink from from our laboratories in an endless stream; almost five hundred
once pure wells. As Albert Schweitzer has said, "Man can hardly annually find their way into actual use in the United States
alone. The figure is staggering and its implications are not
even recognize the devils of his own creation."
easny grasped — 500 new chemicals to which the bodies of
It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now
men and animals are required somehow to adapt each year,
inhabits the earth — eons of time in which that developing and
chemicals totally outside the limits of biologic experience.
evolving and diversifying life reached a state of adjustment and
balance with its surroundings. The environ- ment, rigorously shaping Among them are many that are used in man's war against
and directing the life it supported, contained elements that were nature. Since the mid-1940's over 200 basic chemicals have
hostile as well as supporting. Cer- tain rocks gave out dangerous been created for use in killing insects, weeds, rodents, and other
radiation; even within the light of the sun, from which all life draws organisms described in the modern vernacular as "pests"; and
its energy, there were short-wave radiations with power to injure. they are sold under several thousand different brand names.
Given time — not in years but in millennia — life adjusts, and a These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost
balance has been reached. For time is the essential ingredient; but in universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes —
the modern world there is no time. nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect,
 SILENT SPRING
the "good" and the "bad," to still the song of birds and the by something so seemingly trivial as the choice of an insect spray.
leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly All this has been risked — for what? Future historians may well be
film, and to linger on in soil — all this though the intended amazed by our distorted sense of proportion. How could intelligent
target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that
it is possible contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease
8 and death even to their own kind?
to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the
earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be THE OBLIGATION TO ENDURE 9 Yet this is
called "insecticides," but "biocides." precisely what we have done. We have done it, moreover, for
The whole process of spraying seems caught up in an endless spiral. Since reasons that collapse the moment we examine them. We are
DDT was released for civilian use, a process of escalation has been going on told that the enormous and expanding use of pesticides is
in which ever more toxic materials must be found. This has happened necessary to maintain farm production. Yet is our real
because insects, in a triumphant vindication of Darwin's principle of the problem not one of overproduction? Our farms, despite
survival of the fittest, have evolved super races immune to the particular measures to remove acreages from production and to pay
insecticide used, hence a deadlier one has always to be developed — and farmers not to produce, have yielded such a staggering excess
then a deadlier one than that. It has happened also be- cause, for reasons to of crops that the American taxpayer in 1962 is paying out
be described later, destructive insects often undergo a "flareback," or more than one billion dollars a year as the total carrying cost
resurgence, after spraying, in numbers greater than before. Thus the chemical of the surplus-food storage program. And is the situation
war is never won, and all life is caught in its violent crossfire. helped when one branch of the Agriculture Department tries
Along with the possibility of the extinction of mankind by to reduce production while another states, as it did in 1958,
nuclear war, the central problem of our age has therefore "It is believed generally that reduction of crop acreages under
become the contamination of man's total environment with such provisions of the Soil Bank will stimulate interest in use of
substances of incredible potential for harm — substances that chemicals to obtain maximum production on the land retained
accumulate in the tissues of plants and animals and even in crops."
penetrate the germ cells to shatter or alter the very material of All this is not to say there is no insect problem and no need
heredity upon which the shape of the future depends. of control, I am saying, rather, that control must be geared to
Some would-be architects of our future look toward a time when it realities, not to mythical situations, and that the methods
will be possible to alter the human germ plasm by design. But we may employed must be such that they do not destroy us along with
easily be doing so now by inadvertence, for many chemicals, like the insects.
radiadon, bring about gene mutaüons. It is ironic to think that man
might determine his own future The problem whose attempted solution has brought such a
train of disaster in its wake is an accompaniment of our
 SILENT SPRING
modern way of life. Long before the age of man, insects Mississippi's Agricultural Experiment Station. The method
inhabited the earth —a group of extraordinarily varied and gives 90 to 95 per cent control of the ants. Its cost is only $.23
adaptable beings. Over the course of time since man's advent, per acre. The Agriculture Department's mass control program,
a small percentage of' the more than half a million species of on the other hand, cost about $3-50 per acre — the most
insects have come into conflict with human welfare in two expensive, the most damaging, and the least effective program
principal ways: as competitors for the food supply and as of all.
carriers of human disease.
Disease-carrying insects become important where human
beings are crowded together, especially under conditions
where sanitation is poor, as in time of natural disaster or war
or in situations of extreme poverty and deprivation. Then
control of some sort becomes necessary. It is a sobering fact,
however,
172
Louisiana State University Agricultural Experiment Station, Dr.
L. D. Newsom: "The imported fire ant 'eradication' program
which has been conducted by state and federal agencies is thus
far a failure. There are more infested acres in Louisiana now
than when the program began."
A swing to more sane and conservative methods seems to
have begun. Florida, reporting that "there are more fire ants in
Florida now than there were when the program started,"
announced it was abandoning any idea of a broad eradication
program and would instead concentrate on local control.
Effective and inexpensive methods of local control have been
known for years. The mound-building habit of the fire ant
makes the chemical treatment of individual mounds a simple
matter. Cost of such treatment is about one dollar per acre. For 11. Beyond the
situations where mounds are numerous and mechanized
methods are desirable, a cultivator which first levels and then
Dreams of the Borgias
applies chemical directly to the mounds has been developed by
 SILENT SPRING
THE CONTAMINATION of our world is not alone a
matter of mass spraying. Indeed, for most of us this is of
less importance than the innumerable small-scale exposures
to which we are subjected day by day, year after year. Like
the constant dripping of water that in turn wears away the
hardest stone, this birth-todeath contact with dangerous
chemicals may in the end prove disastrous. Each of these
recurrent exposures, no matter how slight, contributes to
the progressive buildup of chemicals in our bodies and so
to cumulative poisoning. Probably no person is Immune to
contact with this spreading contamination unless
 SILENT SPRING THE DREAMS OF THE BORG IAS
BEYOND
174 he lives in the most isolated situation imaginable. Lulled by Other household preparations contain the even more toxic
the soft sell and the hidden persuader, the average cidzen is dieldrin.
seldom aware of the deadly materials with which he is Use of poisons in the kitchen is made both attractive and easy.
surrounding himself; indeed, he may not realize he is using them Kitchen shelf paper, white or tinted to match one's color scheme,
at all. 175 may be impregnated with insecticide, not merely on one but
So thoroughly has the age of poisons become established that on both sides. Manufacturers offer us do-it-yourself booklets on
anyone may walk into a store and, without questions being how to kill bugs. With push-button ease, one may send a fog of
asked, buy substances of far greater death-dealing power than the dieldrin into the most inaccessible nooks and crannies of
medicinal drug for which he may be required to sign a "poison cabinets, corners, and baseboards.
book" in the pharmacy next door. A few minutes' research in any If we are troubled by mosquitoes, chiggers, or other insect
supermarket is enough to alarm the most stouthearted customer pests on our persons we have a choice of innumerable
— provided, that is, he has even a rudimentary knowledge of the lotions, creams, and sprays for application to clothing or
chemicals presented for his choice. skin. Although we are warned that some of these will
If a huge skull and crossbones were suspended above the dissolve varnish, paint, and synthetic fabrics, we are
insecticide department the customer might at least enter it with presumably to infer that the human skin is impervious to
the respect normally accorded death-dealing materials. But chemicals. To make certain that we shall at all times be
instead the display is homey and cheerful, and, with the pickles prepared to repel insects, an exclusive New York store
and olives across the aisle and the bath and laundry soaps advertises a pocket-sized insecticide dispenser, suitable for
adjoining, the rows upon rows of insecticides are displayed. the purse or for beach, golf, or fishing gear.
Within easy reach of a child's exploring hand are chemicals in We can polish our floors with a wax guaranteed to kill any
glass containers. If dropped to the floor by a child or careless insect that walks over it. We can hang strips impregnated
adult everyone nearby could be splashed with the same chemical with the chemical lindane in our closets and garment bags or
that has sent spraymen using it into convulsions. These hazards place them in our bureau drawers for a half year's freedom
of course follow the purchaser right into his home. A can of a from worry over moth damage. The advertisements contain
mothproofing material containing DDD, for example, carries in no suggestion that lindane is dangerous. Neither do the ads
very fine print the warning that its contents are under pressure for an electronic device that dispenses lindane fumes —we
and that it may burst if exposed to heat or open flame. A are told that it is safe and odorless. Yet the truth of the
common insecticide for household use, including assorted uses matter is that the American Medical Association considers
in the kitchen, is chlordane. Yet the Food and Drug lindane vaporizers so dangerous that it conducted an
Administration's chief pharmacologist has declared the hazard of extended campaign against them in its Journal.
living in a house sprayed with chlordane to be "very great."
 SPRING BEYOND THE DREAMS OF THE BORG IA S
The Department of Agriculture, in a Home and Garden parathion had occurred in Florida before
Bulletin, advises us to spray our clothing with oil solutions this regulation was adopted.
of DDT, dieldrin, chlordane, or any of several other moth Little is done, however, to warn the
killers. If excessive spraying results in a white deposit of gardener or homeowner that he is
insecticide on the fabric, this may be removed by brushing, handling extremely dangerous materials.
the Department says, omitting to caution us to be careful On the contrary, a constant stream of
where and how the brushing is done. All these matters new gadgets make it easier to use
attended to, we may round out our day with insecticides by poisons on lawn and garden — and
going to sleep under a mothproof blanket impregnated with increase the gardener's contact with
dieldrin. them. One may get a jar-type attachment
176 SILENT for the garden hose, for example, by
which such extremely dangerous chemicals
Gardening is now firmly linked with the as chlordane or dieldrin are applied as
super poisons. Every hardware store, one waters the lawn. Such a device is
garden-supply shop, and supermarket has not only a hazard to the person using
rows of insecticides for every the hose; it is also a public menace.
conceivable horticultural situation. The Neu York Times found it necessary to
Those who fail to make wide use of this issue a warning on its garden page to
array of lethal sprays and dusts are by the effect that unless special
implication remiss, for almost every protective devices were installed
newspaper's garden page and the majority poisons might get into the water supply
of the gardening magy zines take their by back siphonage. Considering the
use for granted. number of such devices that are in use,
So extensively are even the rapidly and the scarcity of warnings such as
lethal organic phosphorus insecdcides this, do we need to wonder why our
applied to lawns and ornamental plants public waters are contaminated?
that in 1960 the Florida State Board of As an example of what may happen to the
Health found it necessary to forbid the gardener himself, we might look at the case
commercial use of pesticides in of a physician — an enthusiastic sparetime
residential areas by anyone who had not gardener who began using DDT and then
first obtained a permit and met certain malathion on his shrubs and lawn, making
requirements. A number of deaths from regular weekly applications. Sometimes he
 SILENT SPRING THE DREAMS OF THE BORG IAS
BEYOND
applied the chemicals with a hand spray, Yet little is said about the hazards of
sometimes the fad of gardening by poisons, or of
177 insecticides used in the home; warnings on
with an attachment to his hose. In doing labels are printed so inconspicuously in
so, his skin and clothing were often soaked small type that few take the trouble to
with spray. After about a year of this sort read or follow them. An industrial firm
of thing, he suddenly collapsed and was recently undertook to find out just hou
hospitalized. Examination of a biopsy few. Its survey indicated that fewer than
specimen of fat showed an accumulation of fifteen people out of a hundred of those
23 parts per million of DDT. There was using insecticide aerosols and sprays are
extensive nerve damage, which his even aware of the warnings on the
physicians regarded as permanent. As dme containers.
went on he lost weight, suffered extremc The mores of suburbia now dictate that
fatigue, and experienced a peculiar crabgrass must go at whatever cost. Sacks
muscular weakness, a characteristic effect containing chemicals designed to rid the
of malathion. All of these persisting lawn of such despised vegetation have
effects were severe enough to make it become almost a status symbol. These weed-
diffcult for the physician to carry on his killing chemicals are sold under brand
practice. names that never suggest their identity or
Besides the once innocuous garden hose, nature. To learn that they contain
power mowers also have been fitted with chlordane or dieldrin one must read
devices for the dissemination of exceedingly fine print placed on the least
pesticides, attachments that will dispense conspicuous part of the sack. The 178
a cloud of vapor as the homeowner goes descriptive literature that may be picked
about the task of mowing his lawn. So to up in any hardwareor garden-supply store
the potentially dangerous fumes from seldom if ever reveals the true hazard
gasoline are added the finely divided involved in handling or applying the
particles of whatever insecticide the material. Instead, the typical illustration
probably unsuspecting suburbanite has portrays a happy family scene, father and
chosen to distribute, raising the level of son smilingly preparing to apply the
air pollution above his own grounds to
something few cities could equal.
 SPRING BEYOND THE DREAMS OF THE BORG IA S
chemical to the lawn, small children sampled contained DDT. From this the
tumbling over the grass with a dog. investigators concluded, reasonably
enough, that "few if any foods can be
The question of chemical residues on the relied upon to be entirely free of DDT."
food we eat is a hotly debated issue. The The quantities in such meals may be enormous.
existence of such residues is either played In a separate
down by the industry as unimportant or is Public Health Service study, analysis of
flatly denied. Simultaneously, there is a prison meals disclosed
strong tendency to brand as fanatics or 1
cultists all who are so perverse as to 79 such items as stewed dried fruit
demand that their food be free of insect containing 69.6 parts per million and
poisons. In all this cloud of controversy, bread containing 100.9 parts per million
what are the actual facts? of DDT!
It has been medically established that, as In the diet of the average home, meats
common sense would tell us, persons who lived and any products derived from animal fats
and died before the dawn of the DDT era (about contain the heaviest residues of
1942) contained no trace of DDT or any similar chlorinated hydrocarbons. This is because
material in their tissues. As mentioned in
these chemicals are soluble in fat.
Chapter 3, samples of body fat collected from
Residues on fruits and vegetables tend to
the general population between 1954 and 1956
averaged from 5-3 to 7-4 parts per million of be somewhat less. These are little
DDT. There is some evidence that the average affected by washing — the only remedy is
level has risen since then to a consistently to remove and discard all outside leaves
higher figure, and individuals with of such vegetables as lettuce or cabbage,
occupational or other special exposures to to peel fruit and to use no skins or
insecticides of course store even more. outer covering whatever. Cooking does not
Among the general population with no destroy residues.
known gross exposures to insecticides it Milk is one of the few foods in which
may be assumed that much of the DDT stored no pesticide residues are permitted by
in fat deposits has entered the body in Food and Drug Administration regulations.
food. To test this assumption, a In actual fact, however, residues turn up
scientific team from the United States whenever a check is made. They are
Public Health Service sampled restaurant heaviest in butter and other manufactured
and institutional meals. Every meal dairy products. A check of 461 samples of
 SILENT SPRING THE DREAMS OF THE BORG IAS
BEYOND
such products in 1960 showed that a third
contained residues, a situation which the
Food and Drug Administration
characterized as "far from encouraging.'
To find a diet free from DDT and
related chemicals, it seems one must go
to a remote and primitive land, still
lacking the amenities of civilization.
Such a land appears to exist, at least
marginally, on the far Arctic shores of
Alaska — although even there one may see
the approaching shadow. When scientists
investigated the native diet of the
Eskimos in this region it was found to be
free from insecticides. The fresh and
dried fish; the fat, oil, or meat from
beaver, beluga, caribou, moose, oogruk,
polar bear, and walrus; cranberries,
salmonberries and wild rhubarb all had so
far escaped contamination. There was only
one exception — two white owls from Point
Hope carried small amounts of DDT,
perhaps acquired in the course of some
migratory journey.
When some of the Eskimos themselves were
checked by analysis of fat samples, small
residues of DDT were found (o to 1.9 parts
per million). The reason for this was clear.
The fat
 SILENT SPRING THE DREAMS OF THE BORG IAS
BEYOND
180 samples were taken from people who had left their directions: a lettuce farmer who applied not one but eight
native villages to enter the United States Public Health different insecticides to his crop within a short time of
Service Hospital in Anchorage for surgery. There the ways harvest, a shipper who had used the deadly parathion on
of civilization prevailed, and the meals in this hospital celery in an amount five times the recommended
were found to contain as much DDT as those in the most maximum, growers using endrin — most toxic of all the
populous city. For their brief stay in civilization the chlorinated hydrocarbons — on lettuce although no
Eskimos were rewarded with a taint of poison. resi181 due was allowable, spinach sprayed with DDT a
The fact that every meal we eat carries its load of chlorinated week before harvest.
hydrocarbons is the inevitable consequence of the almost There are also cases of chance or accidental contamination.
universal spraying or dusting of agricultural crops with these Large lots of green coffee in burlap bags have become
poisons. If the farmer scrupulously follows the instructions on contaminated while being transported by vessels also carrying a
the labels, his use of agricultural chemicals will produce no cargo of insecticides. Packaged foods in warehouses are
residues larger than are permitted by the Food and Drug subjected to repeated aerosol treatments with DDT, lindane, and
Administration. Leaving aside for the moment the question other insecticides, which may penetrate the packaging materials
whether these legal residues are as "safe" as they are and occur in measurable quantities on the contained foods. The
represented to be, there remains the well-known fact that longer the food remains in storage, the greater the danger of
farmers very frequently exceed the prescribed dosages, use the contamination.
chemical too close to the time of harvest, use several To the question "But doesn't the government protect us from
insecticides where one would do, and in other ways display the such things?" the answer is, "Only to a limited extent." The
common human failure to read the fine print. activities of the Food and Drug Administration in the field of
Even the chemical industry recognizes the frequent consumer protection against pesticides are severely limited by
misuse of insecticides and the need for education of two facts. The first is that it has jurisdiction only over foods
farmers. One of its leading trade journals recently declared shipped in interstate commerce; foods grown and marketed within
that "many users do not seem to understand that they may a state are entirely outside its sphere of authority, no matter what
exceed insecticide tolerances if they use higher dosages the violation. The second and critically limiting fact is the small
than recommended. And haphazard use of insecticides on number of inspectors on its staff — fewer than 600 men for all its
many crops may be based on farmers' whims." varied work. According to a Food and Drug official, only an
The files of the Food and Drug Administration contain infinitesimal part of the crop products moving in interstate
records of a disturbing number of such violations. A few commerce —far less than 1 per cent — can be checked with
examples will serve to illustrate the disregard of existing facilities, and this is not enough to have stadstical
significance. As for food produced and sold within a state, the
 SILENT SPRING THE DREAMS OF THE BORG IAS
BEYOND
situation is even worse, for most states have woefully inadequate of Food and Drug Administration scientists, as in the
laws in this field. case cited on page 224 ff., or they have been established
The system by which the Food and Drug Administration on the basis of inadequate knowledge of the chemical
establishes maximum permissible limits of contamination, called concerned. Better information has led to later reduction
"tolerances," has obvious defects. Under the conditions prevailing or withdrawal of the tolerance, but only after the public
it provides mere paper security and promotes a completely has been exposed to admittedly dangerous levels of the
unjustified impression that safe limits have been established and chemical for months or years. This happened when
are being adhered to. As to the safety of allowing a sprinkling of heptachlor was given a tolerance that later had to be
poisons on our food — a little on this, a little on revoked. For some chemicals no practical field method
182 of analysis exists before a chemical is registered for use.
Inspectors are therefore frustrated in their search for
that — many people contend, with highly persuasive
residues. This diffculty greatly hampered the work on
reasons, that no poison is safe or desirable on food. In setting a tolerance
the "cranberry chemical," aminotriazole. Analytical
level the Food and Drug Administration reviews tests of the poison on
methods are lacking, too, for certain fungicides in
laboratory animals and then establishes a maximum level of
common use for the treatment of seeds — seeds which if
contamination that is much less than required to produce symptoms in the
unused
test animal. This system, which is supposed to ensure safety, ignores a
number of important facts. A laboratory animal, living under controlled 183
and highly artificial conditions, consuming a given amount of a specific at the end of the planting season, may very well find their way into
chemical, is very different from a human being whose exposures to human food.
pesticides are not only multiple but for the most part unknown, In effect, then, to establish tolerances is to authorize contamination
unmeasurable, and uncontrollable. Even if 7 parts per million of DDT on of public food supplies with poisonous chemicals in order that the
the lettuce in his luncheon salad were "safe," the meal includes other farmer and the processor may enjoy the benefit of cheaper
foods, each with allowable residues, and the pesticides on lit his food are, production — then to penalize the consumer by taxing him to
as we have seen, only a part, and possibly a small part, of his total maintain a policing agency to make certain that he shall not get a
exposure. This piling up' of chemicals from many different sources lethal dose. But to do the policing job properly would cost money
creates a total exposure that cannot be measured. It is meaningless, beyond any legislator's courage to appropriate, given the present
therefore, to talk about the "safety" of any specific amount of residue. volume and toxicity of agricultural chemicals. So in the end the
luckless consumer pays his taxes but gets his poisons regardless.
And there are other defects. Tolerances have What is the solution? The first necessity is the elimination of
sometimes been established against the better judgment tolerances on the chlorinated hydrocarbons, the organic phosphorus
 SILENT SPRING
group, and other highly toxic chemicals. It will immediately be chemicals such as heptachlor, endrin, and dieldrin on certain crops. If
objected that this will place an intolerable burden on the farmer. But it is considered practical in these instances, why not for all?
if, as is now the presumable goal, it is posSible to use chemicals in But this is not a complete or final solution, for a zero tolerance on
such a way that they leave a residue of only 7 parts per million (the paper is of little value. At present, as we have seen, more than 99 per
tolerance for DDT), or of 1 part per million (the tolerance for cent of the interstate food shipments slip by without inspection. A
parathion), or even of only 0.1 part per million as is required for vigilant and aggressive Food and Drug Administration, with a greatly
dieldrin on a great variety of fruits and vegetables, then why is it not increased force of inspectors, is another urgent need.
possible, with only a little more care, to prevent the occurrence of This system, however — deliberately poisoning our food, then
any residues at all? This, in fact, is what is required for some policing the result — is too reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's White
184
Knight who thought of "a plan to dye one's whiskers green, and always use
so large a fan that they could not be seen." The ultimate answer is to use
less toxic chemicals so that the public hazard from their misuse is greatly
reduced. Such chemicals already exist: the pyrethrins, rotenone, ryania, and
others derived from plant substances. Synthetic substitutes for the
pyrethrins have recently been developed, and some of the producing
countries stand ready to increase the output of the natural product as the
market may require. Public education as to the nature of the chemicals
offered for sale is sadly needed. The average purchaser is completely
bewildered by the array of available insecticides, fungicides, and weed
killers, and has no way of knowing which are the deadly ones, which
reasonably safe.
In addition to making this change to less dangerous agricultural pesticides, we
should diligently explore the possibilities of nonchemical methods. Agricultural
use of insect diseases, caused by a bacterium highly specific for certain Lypes of
insects, is already being tried in California, and more extended tests of this
method are under way. A great many other possibilities exist for effective insect
control by methods that will leave no residues on foods (see Chapter 17). Until a
large-scale conversion to these methods has been made, we shall have little relief
from a situation that, by any common-sense standards, is intolerable. As matters
stand now, we are in little better position than the guests of the Borgias.
 SILENT SPRING THE HUMAN PRICE
188 sum of the exposures received throughout his lifetime.
The new environmental health problems are multiple — For these very reasons the danger is easily ignored. It is
created by radiation in all its forms, born of the never-ending human nature to shrug off what may seem to us a vague
stream of chemicals of which pesticides are a part, chemicals threat of future disaster. "Men are naturally most
now pervading the world in which we live, acting upon us impressed by diseases which have obvious
directly and indirectly, separately and collectively. Their manifestations," says a wise physician, Dr. René Dubos,
presence a shadow that is no less ominous because it is "yet some of their worst enemies creep on them
formless and obscure, no less frightening because it is unobtrusively."
simply impossible to predict the effects of lifetime exposure For each of us, as for the robin in Michigan or the
to chemical and physical agents that are not part of the salmon in the Miramichi, this is a problem of ecology, of
biological experience of man. interrelationships, of interdependence. We poison the
"We all live under the haunting fear that something may caddis flies in a stream and the salmon runs dwindle and
corrupt the environment to the point where man joins the die. We poison the gnats in a lake and the poison travels
dinosaurs as an obsolete form of life," says Dr. David Price from link to link of the food chain and soon the birds of
of the United States Public Health Service. "And what the lake margins become its victims. We spray our elms
makes these thoughts all the more disturbing is the and the following springs are silent of robin song, not
knowledge that our fate could perhaps be sealed twenty or because we sprayed the robins directly but because the
more years before the development of symptoms." poison traveled, step by step, through the now familiar
Where do pesticides fit into the picture of environmental disease? elm leaf— earthworm—robin cycle. These are matters of
We have seen that they now contaminate soil, water, and food, that record, observable, part of the visible world around us.
they have the power to make our streams fishless and our gardens and They reflect the web of life — or death — that scientists
woodlands silent and birdless. Man, however much he may like to know as ecology.
pretend the contrary, is part of nature. Can he escape a pollution that is But there is also an ecology of the world within our
now so thoroughly distributed throughout our world? bodies. In this unseen world minute causes produce
We know that even single exposures to these chemicals, if mighty effects; the effect, moreover, is often seemingly
the amount is large enough, can precipitate acute poisoning. unrelated to the cause, appearing in a part of the body
But this is not the major problem. The sudden illness or remote from the area where the original injury was
death of farmers, spraymen, pilots, and others exposed to sustained. "A change at one point, in one molecule even,
appreciable quantities of pesticides are tragic and should not may reverberate throughout the entire system to initiate
occur. For the population as a whole, we must be more changes in seemingly unrelated organs and tissues," says
concerned with the delayed effects of absorbing small a recent summary of the present status of medical
amounts of the pesticides that invisibly contaminate our research. When one is concerned with the mysterious and
world. wonderful functioning of the human body, cause and
Responsible public health offcials have pointed out that effect are seldom simple and easily demonstrated
the biological effects of chemicals are cumulative over long relationships. They may be widely separated both in
periods of tirne, and that the hazard to the individual may space and time. To discover the agent of disease and
depend on the death depends on a patient piecing together of many
189 seemingly distinct and unrelated facts developed through
a vast amount of research in widely separated fields.
 SILENT SPRING THE HUMAN PRICE
190 191
We are accustomed to look for the gross and immediate membranes. It is important to remember, therefore, that
effect and to ignore all else. Unless this appears promptly the fat-soluble insecticides become stored in individual
and in such obvious form that it cannot be ignored, we deny cells, where they are in position to interfere with the
the existence of hazard. Even research men suffer from the most vital and necessary functions of oxidation and
handicap of inadequate methods of detecting the beginnings energy production. This important aspect of the problem
of injury. The lack of suffciently delicate methods to detect will be taken up in the next chapter.
injury before symptoms appear is one of the great unsolved One of the most significant facts about the chlorinated
problems in medicine. hydrocarbon insecticides is their effect on the liver. Of all
"But," someone will object, "I have used dieldrin sprays organs in the body the liver is most extraordinary. In its
on the lawn many times but I have never had convulsions versatility and in the indispensable nature of its functions
like the World Health Organization spraymen — so it hasn't it has no equal. It presides over so many vital activities
harmed me." It is not that simple. Despite the absence of that even the slightest damage to it is fraught with serious
sudden and dramatic symptoms, one who handles such consequences. Not only does it provide bile for the
materials is unquestionably storing up toxic materials in his digestion of fats, but because of its location and the
body. Storage of the chlorinated hydrocarbons, as we have special circulatory pathways that converge upon it the
seen, is cumulative, begmning with the smallest intake. The liver receives blood directly from the digestive tract and
toxic materials become lodged in all the fatty tissues of the is deeply involved in the metabolism of all the principal
body. When these reserves of fat are drawn upon the poison foodstuffs. It stores sugar in the form of glycogen and
may then strike quickly. A New Zealand medical journal releases it as glucose in carefully measured quantities to
recently provided an example. A man under treatment for keep the blood sugar at a normal level. It builds body
obesity suddenly developed symptoms of poisoning. On proteins, including some essential elements of blood
examination his fat was found to contain stored dieldrin, plasma concerned with blood-clotting. It maintains
which had been metabolized as he lost weight. The same cholesterol at its proper level in the blood plasma, and
thing could happen with loss of weight in illness. inactivates the male and female hormones when they
The results of storage, on the other hand, could be even reach excessive levels. It is a storehouse of many
less obvious. Several years ago the Journal of the American vitamins, some of which in turn contribute to its own
Medical Association warned strongly of the hazards of proper functioning.
insecticide storage in adipose tissue, pointing out that drugs Without a normally funcdoning liver the body would be
or chemicals that are cumulative require greater caution disarmed — defenseless against the great variety of
than those having no tendency to be stored in the tissues. poisons that continually invade it. Some of these are
The adipose tissue, we are warned, is not merely a place for normal by-products of metabolism, which the liver
the deposition of fat (which makes up about 18 per cent of swiftly and effciently makes harmless by withdrawing
the body weight), but has Many important functions with their nitrogen. But poisons that have no normal place in
which the stored poisons may interfere. Furthermore, fats the body may also be detoxified. The "harmless"
are very widely distributed in the organs and tissues of the insecticides malathion and methoxychlor are less
whole body, even being constituents of cell poisonous than their relatives only because a liver enzyme
 SILENT SPRING THE HUMAN PRICE
deals with them, altering their molecules in such a way DDT was furnished by several British investigators, who
that their capacity for harm is lessened. In similar ways delib193
the liver deals with the majority of the toxic materials to erately exposed themselves in order to learn the
which we are exposed. consequences. Two scientists at the British Royal Navy
192 Physiological Laboratory invited absorption of DDT
Our line of defense against invading poisons or poisons through the skin by direct contact with walls covered
from within is now weakened and crumbling. A liver with a water-soluble paint contaimng 2 per cent DDT,
damaged by pesticides is not only incapable of protecting us overlaid with a thin film of oil. The direct effect on the
from poisons, the whole wide range of its activities may be nervous system is apparent in their eloquent description
interfered with. Not only are the consequences far-reaching, of their symptoms: "The tiredness, heaviness, and aching
but because of their variety and the fact that they may not of limbs were very real things, and the mental state was
immediately appear they may not be attributed to their true also most distressing . . . [there was] extreme
cause. irritability . . . great distaste for work of any sort . . . a
In connection with the nearly universal use of insecticides that feeling of mental incompetence in tackling the simplest
are liver poisons, it is interesdng to note the sharp rise in hepatitis mental task. The joint pains were quite violent at times."
that began during the 1950's and is continuing a fluctuating Another British experimenter who applied DDT in
climb. Cirrhosis also is said to be increasing. While it is acetone solution to his skin reported heaviness and
admittedly diffcult, in dealing with human beings rather than aching of limbs, muscular weakness, and "spasms of
laboratory animals, to "prove" that cause A produces effect B, extreme nervous tension." He took a holiday and
plain common sense suggests that the relation between a soaring improved, but on return to work his condition
rate of liver disease and the prevalence of liver poisons in the deteriorated. He then spent three weeks in bed, made
environment is no coincidence. Whether or not the chlorinated
miserable by constant aching in limbs, insomnia, nervous
hydrocarbons are the primary cause, it seems hardly sensible
tension, and feelings of acute anxiety. On occasion
under the circumstances to expose ourselves to poisons that have
a proven ability to damage the liver and so presumably to make it
tremors shook his whole body — tremors of the sort now
less resistant to disease. made all too familiar by the sight of birds poisoned by
Both major types of insecticides, the chlorinated DDT. The experimenter lost 10 weeks from his work,
hydrocarbons and the organic phosphates, directly affect and at the end of a year, when his case was reported in a
the nervous system, although in somewhat different ways. British medical journal, recovery was not complete.
This has been made clear by an infinite number of (Despite this evidence, several American investigators
experiments on animals and by observations on human conducting an experiment with DDT on volunteer
subjects as well. As for DDT, the first of the new organic subjects dismissed the complaint of headache and "pain
insecticides to be widely used, its action is primarily on the in every bone" as "obviously of psychoneurotic origin." )
central nervous system of man; the cerebellum and the There are now many cases on record in which both the
higher motor cortex are thought to be the areas chiefly symptoms and the whole course of the illness point to
affected. Abnormal sensations as of prickling, burning, or insecticides as the cause. Typically, such a victim has had
itching, as well as tremors or even convulsions may follow a known exposure to onc of the insecticides, his
exposure to appreciable amounts, according to a standard symptoms have subsided under treatment which included
textbook of toxicology. the exclusion of all insecticides from his environment,
Our first knowledge of the symptoms of acute poisoning by and most significantly have returned with each
 SILENT SPRING THE HUMAN PRICE
194 soil or water or a man's blood, these unrelated chemicals do
renewed contact with the offending chemicals. This sort not remain segregated; there are mysterious and unseen
of evidence — and no more — forms the basis of a vast changes by which one alters the power of another for harm.
amount of medical therapy in many other disorders. There is interaction even between the two major groups of
There is no reason why it should not serve as a warning insecticides usually thought to be completely distinct in their
that it is no longer sensible to take the "calculated risk" of action. The power of the organic phosphates, those poisoners
saturating our environment with pesticides. of the nerve-protective enzyme cholinesterase, may become
Why does not everyone handling and using insecticides greater if the body has first been exposed to a chlorinated
develop the same symptoms? Here the matter of individual hydrocarbon which injures the liver. This is because, when
sensitivity enters in. There is some evidence that women are liver function is disturbed, the cholinesterase level drops
more susceptible than men, the very young more than adults, below normal. The added depressive effect of the organic
those who lead sedentary, indoor lives more than those leading a phosphate may then be enough to precipitate acute
rugged life of work or exercise in the open. Beyond these symptoms. And as we have seen, pairs of the organic
differences are others that are no less real because they are phosphates themselves may interact in such a way as to
intangible. What makes one person allergic to dust or pollen, increase their toxicity a hundredfold. Or the organic
sensitive to a poison, or susceptible to an infection whereas phosphates may interact with various drugs, or with
another is not is a medical mystery for which there is at present synthetic materials, food additives — who can say what else
no explanadon. The problem nevertheless exists and it affects of the infinite number of man-made substances that now
significant numbers of the population. Some physicians estimate pervade our world?
that a third or more of their patients show signs of some form of The effect of a chemical of supposedly innocuous nature
sen- sitivity, and that the number is growing. And unfortunately, can be drastically changed by the action of another; one of
sensitivity may suddenly develop in a person previously the best examples is a close relative of DDT called
insensitive. In fact, some medical men believe that intermittent methoxychlor. (Actually, methoxychlor may not be as free
exposures to chemicals may produce just such sensitivity. If this from dangerous qualities as it is generally said to be, for
is true, it may explain why some studies on men subjected to recent work on experimental animals shows a direct action
continuous occupational exposure find little evidence of toxic on the uterus and a blocking effect on some of the powerful
effects. By their constant contact with the chemicals these men pituitary hormones — reminding us again that these are
keep themselves desensitized — as an allergist keeps his chemicals with enormous biologic effect. Other work shows
patients desensitized by repeated small injections of the allergen. that methoxychlor has a potential ability to damage the
The whole problem of pesticide poisoning is kidneys.) Because it is not stored to any great extent when
enormously complicated by the fact that a human being, given alone, we are told that methoxychlor is a safe
unlike a laboratory animal living under rigidly controlled chemical. But this is not necessarily true. If the liver has
conditions, is never exposed to one chemical alone. been damaged by another agent, methoxychlor is stored in
Between the major groups of insecticides, and between the body at 100 times its normal rate, and will then imitate
them and other chemicals, there are interacdons that have the effects of DDT with long-lasting effects on the nervous
serious potentials. Whether released into system. Yet the liver damage that brings this about might be
195 so slight as to pass 196 unnoticed. It might have been the
result of any of a number of commonplace — using another
insecticide, using a cleaning fluid containing carbon
 SILENT SPRING THE HUMAN PRICE
tetrachloride, or taking one of the so-called tranquilizing paralysis." The paralysis was accompanied by
drugs, a number (but not all) of which are chlorinated destruction of the nerve sheaths and by degeneration of
hydrocarbons and possess power to damage the liver. the cells of the anterior horns of the spinal cord.
Damage to the nervous system is not confined to acute About two decades later various other organic
poisoning; there may also be delayed effects from exposure. phosphates came into use as insecticides, as we have
Longlasting damage to brain or nerves has been reported for seen, and soon cases reminiscent of the ginger paralysis
methoxychlor and others. Dieldrin, besides its immediate episode began to occur. One was a greenhouse worker in
consequences, can have long delayed effects ranging from Germany who became paralyzed several months after
"loss of memory, insomnia, and nightmares to mania." experiencing mild symptoms of poisoning on a few
Lindane, according to medical findings, is stored in occasions after using parathion. Then a group of three
significant amounts in the brain and functioning liver tissue chemical plant workers developed acute poisoning from
and may induce "profound and long lasting effects on the exposure to other insecticides of this group. They
central nervous system." Yet this chemical, a form of recovered under treatment, but ten days later two of
benzene hexachloride, is much used in vaporizers, devices them developed muscular weakness in the legs. This
that pour a stream of voladlized insecticide vapor into persisted for 10 months in one; the other, a young
homes, offces, restaurants. woman chemist, was more severely affected, with
The organic phosphates, usually considered only in relation to paralysis in both legs and some involvement of the
their more violent manifestations in acute poisoning, also have the hands and arms. Two years later when her case was
power to produce lasting physical damage to nerve tissues and, reported in a medical journal she was still unable to
according to recent findings, to induce mental disorders. Various walk,
cases of delayed paralysis have followed use of one or another of The insecticide responsible for these cases Has been
these insecticides. A bizarre happening in the United States during withdrawn from the market, but some of those now in use
the prohibition era about 1930 was an omen of things to come. It may be capable of like harm. Malathion (beloved of
was caused not by an insecticide but by a substance belonging gardeners) has induced severe muscular weakness in
chemically to the same group as the organic phosphate experiments on chickens. This was attended (as in ginger
insecticides. During that period some medicinal substances were paralysis) by destruction of the sheaths of the sciatic and
being pressed into service as substitutes for liquor, being exempt spinal nerves.
from the prohibition law. One of these was Jamaica ginger. But All these consequences of organic phosphate
the United States Phammcopeia product was expensive, and poisoning, if survived, may be a prelude to worse. In
bootleggers conceived the idea of making a substitute Jamaica
view of the severe damage they inflict upon the nervous
ginger. They succeeded so well that their spurious product
system, it was perhaps inevitable that these insecticides
responded to the appropriate chemical tests 197
would eventually be linked with
and deceived the government chemists. To give their
false ginger the necessary tang they had introduced a
chemical known as triorthocresyl phosphate. This
chemical, like parathion and its relatives, destroys the
protective enzyme cholinesterase. As a consequence of
drinking the bootleggers' product some 15,000 people
developed a permanently crippling type of paralysis of
the leg muscles, a condition now called "ginger
 SILENT SPRING
198
mental disease. That link has recently been supplied by investigators at the University of
Melbourne and Prince Henry's Hospital in Melbourne, who reported on 16 cases of mental
disease. All had a history of prolonged exposure to organic phosphorus insecticides. Three were
scientists checking the effcacy of sprays; 8 worked in greenhouses; 5 were farm workers. Their
symptoms ranged from impairment of memory to schizophrenic and depressive reactions. All
had normal medical histories before the chemicals they were using boomeranged and struck
them dowm
Echoes of this sort of thing are to be found, as we have seen, widely scattered throughout
medical literature, sometimes involving the chlorinated hydrocarbons, sometimes the organic
phosphates. Confusion, delusions, loss of memory, mania — a heavy price to pay for the
temporary destruction of a few insects, but a price that will continue to be exacted as long as we
insist upon using chemicals that strike directly at the nervous system.

13. Through a Narrow Window

THE BIOLOGIST George Wald once compared his work on

an exceedingly specialized subject, the visual pigments of the
eye, to "a very narrow window through which at a distance one
can see only a crack of light. As one comes closer the view
grows wider and wider, until finally through this same narrow
window one is looking at the universe."
So it is that only when we bring our focus to bear, first on
the individual cells of the body, then on the minute structures
within the cells, and finally on the ultimate reactions of
molecules within these structures — only when we do this can
we comprehend the most serious and far-reaching effects of the
17. The Other Road
WE STAND NOW where two roads diverge. But unlike the
roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair.
The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a
smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed,
but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one
"less traveled by" — offers our last, our only chance to reach a
destination that assures the preservation of our earth.
The choice, after all, is ours to make. If, having endured
278 SILENT SPRING THE OTHER ROAD 279 much, we have at last asserted our "right to know," and if, 1940's, turned their backs on
all biological methods and set foot knowing, we have concluded that we are being asked to take on "the treadmill of chemical control." But
the goal of an senseless and frightening risks, then we should no longer accept insect-free world continued to recede. Now at last, as it has
 the counsel of those who tell us that we must fill our world with become apparent that the heedless and unrestrained use of chemipoisonous
chemicals; we should look about and see what other cals is a greater menace to ourselves than to the targets, the river course is open to us.
which is the science of biotic control flows again, fed by new A truly extraordinary variety of alternatives to the chemical streams of
thought.
control of insects is available. Some are already in use and have Some of the most fascinating of the new methods are those achieved
brilliant success. Others are in the stage of laboratory that seek to turn the strength of a species against itself— to use testing. Still others
are little more than ideas in the minds of the drive of an insect's life forces to destroy it. The most specimagmative scientists, waiting for the
opportunity to put them tacular of these approaches is the "male sterilization" technique to the test. All have this in common: they are
biological solu- developed by the chief of the United States Department of tions, based on understanding of the living organisms they seek
Agriculture's Entomology Research Branch, Dr. Edward Knipto control, and of the whole fabric of life to which these organ- ling, and his
associates.
isms belong. Specialists representing various areas of the vast About a quarter of a century ago Dr. Knipling startled his field of biology are
contributing — entomologists, pathologists, colleagues by proposing a unique method of insect control. If geneticists, physiologists,
biochemists, ecologists — all pouring it were possible to sterilize and release large numbers of insects, their knowledge and their creative
inspirations into the forma- he theorized, the sterilized males would, under certain condition of a new science of biotic controls. tions,
compete with the normal wild males so successfully that, "Any science may be likened to a river," says a Johns Hopkins after
repeated releases, only infertile eggs would be produced biologist, Professor Carl P. Swanson. "It has its obscure and and the population
would die out.

unpretentious beginnmg; its quiet stretches as well as its rapids; The proposal was met with bureaucratic inertia and with its periods of
drought as well as of fullness. It gathers momentum skepticism from scientists, but the idea persisted in Dr. Knipling's with the work of
many investigators and as it is fed by other mind. One major problem remained to be solved before it could streams of thought; it is
deepened and broadened by the concepts be put to the test — a practical method of insect sterilization had and generalizations that are
gradually evolved." to be found. Academically, the fact that insects could be sterilSo it is with the science of biological control in its modern
ized by exposure to X-ray had been known since 1916, when sense. In America it had its obscure beginnings a century ago an entomologist
by the name of G. A. Runner reported such with the first attempts to introduce natural enemies of insects sterilization of cigarette beetles.
Hermann Muller's pioneering that were proving troublesome to farmers, an effort that some- work on the production of mutations by X-ray
opened up times moved slowly or not at all, but now and again gathered vast new areas of thought in the late 1920's, and by the midspeed
and momentum under the impetus of an outstanding suc- dle of the century various workers had reported the sterilcess. It had its period of
drought when workers in applied ization by X-rays or gamma rays of at least a dozen species of entomology, dazzled by the spectacular new
insecticides of the insects.
296 SILENT SPRING ing on the species, may devour up to It is not surprising that the island of Newfoundland, which
800! This may result, according to laboratory tests, in has no native shrews but is beset with sawflies, so eagerly
desired some of these small, effcient mammals that in 1958 the
destruction of 75 to 98 per cent of the cocoons present.
introduction of the masked shrew — the most efficient sawfly
predator — was attempted. Canadian offcials report in 1962 no "high-minded orientation," no humility before the vast forces
that the attempt has been successful. The shrews are with which they tamper.
multiplying and are spreading out over the island, some marked The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance,
individuals having been recovered as much as ten miles from born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy,
the point of release. when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of
There is, then, a whole battery of armaments available to the man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the
forester who is willing to look for permanent solutions that most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming
preserve and strengthen the natural relations in the forest. misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the
Chemical pest control in the forest is at best a stopgap measure most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them
bringing no real solution, at worst killing the fishes in the forest against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.
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 most important and almost last
natural living space which has been left for us."

Through all these new, imaginative, and creative approaches

to the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures there
runs a constant theme, the awareness that we are dealing with
life — with living populations and all their pressures and
counterpressures, their surges and recessions. Only by taking
account of such life forces and by cautiously seeking to guide
them into channels favorable to ourselves can we hope to
achieve a reasonable accommodation between the insect
hordes and ourselves.
THE OTHER ROAD 297 The current
vogue for poisons has failed utterly to take into account these
most fundamental considerations. As crude a weapon as the
cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against
the fabric of life — a fabric on the one hand delicate and
destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and
capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These
extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the
practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task