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Photo of Rachel Carson from Flickr posted
by the U.S Fish and Wildlife Services |
Rachel Carson was one of the first scientific environmentalists, and she played a massive role in the environmental movement since the 1950’s. Rachel Carson wrote many books such as The Sea All Around us in 1950 which was a huge success, and her research was focused on the environment. She also had the unfortunate luck of being alive in a time when there was extreme sexism in the scientific community, and had much of her work shuffled to the side due to her gender but eventually her research would be recognized worldwide due to the sheer factual quality of it. She was referred to as a revolutionary of her time due to her work raising awareness for poisonous pesticides being used for farming in the United States, which I will get into in a little bit. Her work is incredible and she was motivated heavily by having a clean, brimming with life Earth which was quickly becoming a concern for many with the destructive poisons being spread after World War II. She had a degree in zoology from John Hopkins University, and 15 years of wildlife work experience under her belt, she was an extremely intelligent scientist who also knew how to communicate her ideas to the people that needed to hear them the most.
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Short Video On Rachel Carson from Youtube user
OpenMind |
Rachel Carson is most known for her book Silent Spring, which was released in 1962 at a time when a poisonous chemical known as dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (or DDT) was being used as a pesticide on crops as it was used in World War II to prevent the spread of disease, specifically typhus fever which was spread by fleas and lice. The DDT was very effective at killing the pests in the trenches and then after the war it was discovered to help crops grow, so it started being used as a pesticide. Rachel Carson began noticing that after the aerial sprays in spring, birds would begin to fall and die in air which actually inspired her book title, Silent Spring where she said that if these pesticides were going to be continued to be used, the Springtime would be silent and have no birds singing because they would all be dead. She began researching the effects that DDT had on the environment and she found that DDT wasn’t just killing pests, it was killing so much more by spreading through the food chain. When the book was released in 1962 it had a massive impact on how people viewed pesticide use and environmental care. Her book even got presidential recognition from President John F Kennedy and it directly impacted the Presidential Science Advisory Committee. A few years after the book was released, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created and a direct ban of domestic use on DDT was made in 1972. Rachel Carson’s research into DDT use and how these types of poisons spread through the environment had a huge impact on the world at the time, and we are still benefiting from her findings today in a variety of ways. You can do much more reading on this specific topic and go much deeper into her research into Bioaccumulation at the
American Chemical Society web site, where a host information on this is held.
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Image of the National American History Museum's
exhibit of Rachel Carson's books uploaded by
Flickr user Ryan Somma |
As mentioned before, Rachel Carson had some major questions about her credibility as a scientist due to her gender. This obviously has nothing to do with her research quality, but at this time in the United States there was extreme sexism towards women. This led to it being harder to get her research out there and people ignoring her research. This did not stop Rachel Carson though, as she worked hard to provide hard, factual proof that DDT was killing the environment that could not be disagreed with. She did provide this factual evidence and many accepted her and her work after the sheer quality of Silent Spring including the president of the United States at the time and his . Although there were some that did not, due to benefitting off the profitability from increased crop yields from DDT use and others who were just ignorant. Carson had excellent credentials, as she worked with the U.S Fish and Wildlife service from 1936 until 1952 where she had gained tons of experience working with the environment and the policies that governed it. So for anyone to invalidate her research due to her being a woman thus automatically invalidating anything she had to say is just blatantly incorrect. This sexism never stopped her though, and she made huge steps for women scientists by making people realize that women are just as capable as men as scientists.
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Photos of cute turtles hanging out on a lil' log on the
Ashuelot River in Keene NH. Photo taken by Me!
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Rachel Carson had a massive impact on the world, and that is not an overstatement. The direction we were heading in with spraying DDT on everything, even people without realizing the harm that was being done was an extremely dangerous path. She left a legacy behind when she passed in 1964, she had planted the seed of environmentalism in the average person's head and that has continued even to today where I have learned about her in several classes. Her work was extremely important and directly led to the start of the EPA, which has done great things for regulating the laws around the environment. I truthfully do believe that without Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962, we would have a much more different environment today. The EPA has passed so many crucial policies such as the Clean Air Act and The Clean Water Act, and if those policies weren’t passed then who knows what kind of conditions our water and air would be like in our modern society with extreme means of production and large population. Rachel Carson has impacted where I live by making sure our air wasn’t infected with pollutants, by making sure there are still birds and other life every spring, and by making sure our beautiful rivers and lakes stay clean.
