Recently, as part of an assignment in my integrated pest management course at Kauai Community College (PBT 141), I was required to write a reflection on Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.”
Written in 1962, it is considered by many as a catalyst for the development of the “ecology movement” later in that same decade. Carson’s classic was a clarion call to legislators and government regulators to take decisive action to protect the planet and its creatures from what she termed “Elixirs of Death.”
These chemical cocktails of herbicides and pesticides were becoming more and more available to the public, and the consequences were alarming. The book brought about a greater awareness of the environmental harm and injury that modern chemistry and its industrial compounds caused to all of creation.
I first remember hearing about “Silent Spring” in the late 1980’s when I was employed as an Outward Bound instructor in North Carolina. Quotes from the book were often shared during campfire discussions on the environment and man’s impact on the web of life. I didn’t read the book until much later in life when the debate about pesticides, GMOs, and organic farming was front and center in our community.
As a beekeeper, I was very concerned about the widespread use of pesticides in the modern era and followed the debate and discussion with great interest. In the process of researching the issues, references to Carson’s book were numerous and timely. With the public hearings about Bill 2491 in full swing I was sufficiently motivated to read this “environmental literary classic.”
Carson’s valid concerns about the negative impact of modern chemistry on our planet’s inhabitants had, at that time, a significant influence on the response from government agencies and legislators tasked with regulating environmental and public health.
In reading it for the first time, I was struck by its relevancy and frustrated at how little progress had been made in regards to keeping harmful chemicals out of our food sources and the environment. I remember thinking that the influence of corporations on regulations and legislation, as mentioned in Carson’s book, continues unabated.
In re-reading “Silent Spring” for my current assignment, I find it somewhat ironic that SB 3095 (a bill related to environmental protection and agri-chemicals) received favorable support from Hawaii’s legislators after years of debate and obstruction from industry leaders more concerned with private profit over public and environmental health.
The outcry from readers of Carson’s expose on the ecological disaster caused by pesticides and other harmful chemicals contributed to shaping an environmental justice movement while helping to create policies and agencies like the Clean Water Act, the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The banning or restrictions of harmful pesticides like DDT and chlordane among others have led to great improvements in environmental and public health.
Environmental protection and public-health policy are critical functions of government and, as mentioned earlier, were greatly influenced in the 1960s by the publication of “Silent Spring.” In this era of President Donald Trump and his dismantling of federal government agencies like the EPA, the passing of SB 3095 is monumental and welcomed by many in the community.
The phasing out and banning of the use of chlorpyrifos along with the establishment of buffer zones around schools are actions I’m sure that Rachel Carson would support. Let’s see if Gov. Ige feels likewise and signs SB 3095 into law.
•••
James G. Trujillo is a Kapaa
resident.
The elimination of DDT was one of the worst political decisions that led to the deaths of more innocent people than all of WWII.
Back in the 1990’s I founded the first organic pest control company in California. In my research for natural pesticides I always had to weigh the efficacy of naturally derived chemicals versus synthetic. Natural and organic usually had much fewer unwanted side effects but they could not always match the power of synthetics and such was the case with DDT.
In chemistry it is rarely a case of one option being clearly better than another. When DDT was first introduced by a Swiss chemist before WWII, Malaria and Typhus claimed hundreds of millions of victims. Malaria rates dropped by 80-90% where used by spraying small amounts on walls and eaves of homes and huts twice a year. According to the National Academy of Sciences- “To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. It is estimated that, in little more than two decades DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that would otherwise have been inevitable.”
When Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring other environmental activists piled on and we were warned that the average life span of adults would level off at age 42 due to the use of DDT. This helped lead to the world-wide elimination of DDT which helped to usher in the return of malaria and the deaths of tens of millions of people. Most people think that DDT is all bad, case closed, when in fact there is a ton of contravening information about the harm it supposedly causes. In the US, the judge that made the decision to ban it did not attend any EPA hearings and did not even read opposing arguments and later admitted his decision was political. The Surgeon General at the time said Rachel Carson’s work was not research but merely hysterical speculation so there were obviously widely divergent views on it even among experts.
According to Unicef, currently, over half a billion people a year are infected with Malaria. I’m not saying DDT should or should not have been banned but the fact is that its removal has caused more deaths of innocents than WWII. A little more thought and study (without the politics) should have been applied before making such a sweeping world-wide ban that affects so many people.
Stan…good call on DDT. Of course, we know that many environmentalist do not really care about the condition of humanity. In that light it is easy to see why the ban on DDT, one of the safest, most efficacious pesticides ever, has not been lifted…the burden of agonizing deaths from malaria, etc. is borne by people living in third-world countries. The elitist environmental types couldn’t care less.
The resurgence of malaria and other insect borne diseases has prompted many African countries to ignore the elitists and now employ DDT.
Rachel Carson was lying, inadvertently or on purpose, when she said that American Bald Eagle egg shells were turning leather like and the chicks dying because of DDT. It was revealed years later that the problem was a virus. Anyway DDT was banned and millions have paid with their lives.
RG DeSoto
Aloha Kakou,
Since it is known that the chemical poisons kill living things in the air, waterways, land, and ocean; and give fatal diseases to humans and damage the unborn people…well, there are war crimes, why aren’t there Chemical Crimes…why ? Are they too rich to Try in a Criminal Court…?
Mahalo,
Charles
Another article with not one single word about the product that will replace the one that is banned. Not one single word!
Don’t we have to assume that the overwhelming favorite got there because there are problems with #2?
We do until we hear different; but we won’t hear anything here except crickets. The same is true for Hooser’s piece, TGI’s oped, and from everyone voting in the Leg.
When DDT was banned there was no backup and 52 million have died since and epidemics have been countless except in the 13 countries, including South Africa, that kept using DDT. BTW, they’re doing just fine after 50 years!
I left out 2 words: The word “effective” goes before backup and the word “malaria” goes before epidemics.”
√ FACTS ABOUT RACHEL CARSON !
How can Trujillo validate Carson ?!?! Observers agree that Carson was the first environmental-terrжrist, the queen of junk science, and one of the greatest mass killers in recent history. Rachel Carson recklessly wrote the notorious anti-pesticide book entitled Silent Spring while she was stricken and dying with breast cancer, which was diagnosed in spring 1960. While writing the book, she underwent radical mastectomy in April 1960, as well as radiation treatment. Given her own terminal state of health, Carson decided to wail endlessly about the supposed risks of chemicals in the environment, specifically DDT insecticide. In the minds of many observers, there is NO doubt that Carson’s illness tainted her views regarding chemicals. It is a known fact that while a person is dying due to a disease, the human mind often attempts to link the reason for the disease with a specific event or blunder. Consequently, Silent Spring was Carson’s scientifically inaccurate blunder. Moreover, Carson had NO competent background, NO training, and NO expertise in matters concerning pest control products. She was NOT competent to discuss pest control products. In fact, Carson can only be described as a mere zoologist, spinster, and cancer victim. With the passage of time, it has become clear that Silent Spring was severely flawed. Most of the allegations in Silent Spring were ultimately shown to be scientifically inaccurate and filled with junk science. Some observers maintain that Silent Spring was approximately two-thirds incorrect, and hence only one-third correct. Carson has been described as a lying female jackal and a paranoid chemophobe who paved the way for killing millions of innocents on continents like Africa. Because of their conspiracy to prohibit against DDT insecticide, Carson and her followers have been held accountable for killing more people than Hitler.
MORE √ FACTS ABOUT RACHEL CARSON !
√ FACT — Rachel Carson Was A Lying Female Jackal & Served As The Inspiration Of Loathsome DDT Opponents — LINK
http://pesticidetruths.com/2014/05/13/rachel-carson-was-a-lying-female-jackal-loathsome-ddt-opponents-raise-their-ugly-heads-steven-j-milloy-2014-05-11/
√ FACT — Rachel Carson Was The Queen Of Junk Science & Killed More People Than Hitler — LINK
http://pesticidetruths.com/toc/rachel-carson/
√ FACT — Rachel Carson Filled Our World With Politicized Science — LINK
http://pesticidetruths.com/toc/ddt-and-our-world-politicized-science/
√ FACT — Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring Contained Totally False Claims About DDT — LINK
http://pesticidetruths.com/2014/08/20/alan-caruba-when-rachel-carsons-book-silent-spring-was-published-filled-with-totally-false-claims-about-ddt/
99% of people currently tested still have DDT in their bodies. I have tested patients here on Kauai and each test showed positive DDT levels in the blood
http://www.panna.org/resources/ddt-story
And no one knows what the chemical “cocktails” cause. The mixtures have no names and the effects of the mixtures and accumulation over time is not known
If you’re really a devotee of Rachel Carson, you should be supporting GMO crops, Jimmy, rather than opposing them. They’re helping to dramatically reduce pesticide use, though the antis love to claim the opposite. Also, for you to claim that little progress has been made in regulating pesticide reveals your deep ignorance on the topic. Keep going to school! You might just learn something!
Why in the world would anyone seek treatment from Marghee Maupin?
This is a very late comment, and I doubt anyone will read it, but I have to chuckle at the comments from people complaining about reducing pesticides. In a few years there will be no insects left, and as insects go, so goes the human race. We are about to face a huge environmental crisis on a scale that is unimaginable. Springs are already falling silent with many insect populations, and everything that relies on them, facing extinction. Anyone remember how in the summer we would have to clean car windshields due to bugs? No more… windshields are crystal clean — and now at our horse farm we eerily don’t need fly spray, as the population of flies has dropped dramatically in the past two summers. So go ahead and debate on this useless forum, we have soiled our own house beyond repair, and successfully destroyed our species and nature as we know it.