Critical Paper Silent Spring

Rachel Carson was an intelligent woman, she knew it was not a good idea to spray chemicals over the earth, she knew there were better ways of killing the weeds, insects, rodents, and other organisms that are a problem. She spent most of her life researching and writing about these things. The problem with spraying insecticides and pesticides to kill one thing is that it will hurt many more things in the process, including defenseless plants and animals. It doesn't really work when you try and control nature. There are many other ways and alternatives that can be used other then chemical control of insects. These other ways will not harm the environment as a whole as the chemical spraying does.

Rachel Carson was a very intelligent woman. She had always had a love for nature and for writing, ever since she was young, and it showed in the work she did. She had an English major when she went to college. The Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea are some of the major works that made her one of (p xvi, Silent Spring) the leading science writer in the United States. Her major switched to Biology before she graduated, she tried to find something that would fulfill what she really liked writing and nature. She became one of two women that worked for the Bureau of Fisheries, which later became the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, where she was a junior aquatic biologist. She became editor and chief of the publications of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In about 1945 she made Reader's Digest aware of the shocking evidence of DDT use and how harmful it was, they however were not interested. In 1957 she knew that the chemicals being sprayed were "potentially harmful to the long-term health of the whole biota." She made it her work, until she died of breast cancer, to make everybody realize how bad the spraying of chemicals on the earth is, not only for us now but for future generations as well. Her book Silent Spring helps explain why these chemicals are bad, what they are doing to our environment, and it even has alternative to large mass sprayings of toxic chemicals.

The spraying of chemicals "chlorinated hydrocarbons and organic phosphorus insecticides alter the cellular processes of plants, animals, and, by implication humans."(p xv) The chemicals are causing the pollution of our entire environment, not just where the spraying occurs. This problem is so widespread and the poison has entered so many fish, birds, reptiles, and wild and domestic animals that it is not really possible for scientists to find any without these chemicals in their system. The chemicals that we are putting on our earth now will remain for generation to come. Some of the poisons that are general can cause deadly rise in temperature, gene mutation, or tumors. They can get into your bodies vital processes and make changes that can cause death. The poisons that get ...