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Publication Of Silent Spring
Rachel Carson, a well-known writer on natural history, published the book Silent Spring on September 27, 1962. Carson had written on nature before and was a trained marine biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, so she was uniquely qualified to publish such a startling essay. The book is generally credited with starting the environmental movement. Upon release, it was selected for the Book of the Month Club and the New York Times best-seller list. Public readership spread, which informed the public of concerns with pesticides and pollution. In fact, Silent Spring helped to ban the pesticide DDT in the United States in 1972. A second book entitled Beyond Silent Spring was published as a follow-up in 1996 by authors H.F. van Emden and David Peakall.
Carson's friend, Olga Owens Huckins, sent a letter to The Boston Herald in January 1958 in which she described the strange death of birds around her property following the use of aerial spray DDT to kill mosquitoes. Huckins sent a copy of the letter to Carson, which caused her to research further the environmental effects of chemical pesticides. At the same time, a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture was filed over the use of aerial spraying over Long Island. Carson had already begun research on environmental issues in the 1940s though during the anti-pest campaigns at the time. With all of this extensive evidence, she tried to publish an article on the topic. However, because of the popular use of DDT, no magazine was willing to publish her claims. She decided to rely on her authority as a well-known author and published her own book on the topic anyways.
In the book, she argues that the prevalence of uncontrolled use of chemicals was harming animals, birds, and humans alike. The title came from the John Keats' poem "La Belle Dame sans Merci" in which he writes, "The sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing." Carson depicts a society in her book in which there are no bird songs in the spring. At some point, without any environmental policies, she suggests that all birds would die off.
The author received much criticism due to her publication. Critics threatened her with lawsuits and suggested that she was a "hysterical woman" who was not qualified to write a book. She made clear that she was not calling for the complete banning of all pesticides, but that she wanted to inspire responsible use of chemicals. In the past, environmental effects were not considered and she hoped that human influence on the entire ecosystem should be taken into account. The public response could not be ignored, so the current U.S. President John F. Kennedy began an investigation with his Science Advisory Committee to look into her accusations. She was proven accurate in this investigation, which subsequently sparked a change in government regulation of chemical pesticides.
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