Los Angeles Times Archive/UCLA
September 27, 1962: Silent Spring is published.
Fifty years ago, a marine biologist named Rachel Carson published a controversial book on the harmful nature of pesticides, especially DDT, on the environment, animals, and humans. Like Common Sense and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Silent Spring was of that particular class of publication that arguably changed the attitude of a nation; what the former two did for the American Revolution and abolition, respectively, Silent Spring did for the environmental movement.
The insecticide DDT was introduced as such in the late 1930s; the man who discovered its insecticidal properties, Paul Hermann Müller, was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. During this period, DDT played a key role in eliminating or at least controlling insect-borne diseases like yellow fever and malaria around the world. Throughout the 40s and 50s, pressure mounted for more restrictions to regulate its use, but it was not until Silent Spring that this cause received national attention. The book has been and continues to be criticized, however; DDT is now banned for agricultural use in many countries (including the United States, since 1972), but some argue that its banning has indirectly caused millions of deaths from malaria (read a refutation of this claim here). Contrary to the belief of some of her critics, Carson did not advocate the complete banning of pesticides but for more responsible use.
The title Silent Spring is derived from the famous first chapter (A Fable for Tomorrow), which describes an American town affected by “a strange illness”, presumably pesticide pollution. The chapter ends with these lines:
No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the birth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves… A grim specter has crept upon us almost unnoticed, and this imagined tragedy may easily become a stark reality we all shall know.
What has already silenced the voices of spring in countless towns in America? This book is an attempt to explain.