Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

Summary

Given time, states Carson in her book Silent Spring, nature will heal itself. Humans are subjected to "dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death," Carson states. Chemicals are everywhere. They are in the soil, water, and air. They are found in almost every household: under the bathroom sink in the form of cleaners, on shelves in the garage in forms of paint thinners and glues, in the kitchen in form of insecticides, in the bedroom in the forms of hair sprays and other cosmetics. They are present in food and drink, even in the milk that mothers produce from their own bodies; they are even present "in the tissues of the unborn child."

The chemicals that Carson focuses on are those whose prevalence began during World War Two, "in the course of developing agents of chemical warfare," and were first promoted on a commercial level when it was discovered that these chemicals were useful in killing insects. But what Carson believed was the worst element of these chemicals was not that they were capable of poisoning but that these new chemical discoveries were capable of making potent and irreversible changes on a deep, biological level in every living thing on earth (Carson, 1962). These new synthetic chemicals could enter the plants as well as animals and "change them in sinister . . . ways. . . . Carson was ahead of her time. She sensed scientific truths that would not be proven until after her death. She sensed the cancers that would become more and more commonplace.

Carson warns mankind in part by listing details of the incredible number of new chemicals that are being produced each year. But it is not until she gets very up close and personal in her discussions that the full power of her book takes effect. The lists of chemicals and their potential power are daunting, nightmarish material, but names don't make the same impact as the fear of suffering and pain. And the source of some of that potential suffering might be as close as the nearest water fountain.

For example, it is alarming to know that chemists are creating excessive quantities of chemical compounds in their laboratories, but it is even more frightening to find out that even more deadly compounds are being created in the water that people drink. Runoffs from various chemical sources meet one another in the water resources of this earth. Even if chemists know the effects that their chemical compounds might have on the living things of nature, they do not, Carson warns, know the effects of the compounds being created on their own in the rivers, the lakes, and the sewers.

Carson talks about all kinds of potential disasters, some more severe than others. On the lighter side, she mentions a more aesthetic kind of disaster, one that wipes out the beauty of nature. Using the excuse of traffic control and safety, there was, in Carson's time, and ...