In less than four months, Houghton-Mifflin brought out a full book edition of Carson's work now named Silent Spring. Other media outlets including network television that was just discovering its power picked up on the story.The Kennedy adminstration and Congress were more receptive to the ensuing debate. Her articles came just as a new, more liberal crop of Senators and Representatives were descending on Washington.The public were sensitized to the fact that science is sometimes wrong.
The drug caused 10,000 children to be born without arms or legs. Carson's articles came on the heels of the "thalidomide baby" tragedy where a new sedative was prescribed to pregnant women in Europe to help with sleeplessness and morning sickness.
The articles caused a stir, in part because of three outside factors In June 1962, the New Yorker magazine carried the first of three articles by Carson that charged that pesticides were being used excessively with little regard for their impact on nature as a whole and on humans. She worked for a time at the Bureau of Fisheries as a biologist and wrote a successful appreciation of oceans in 1951, entitled The Sea Around Us. She grew up in the industrial pollution of Pittsburgh and couldn't wait to escape. Rachel Carson was a noted biologist and nature writer at a time when there were few women scientists. There was not real debate over pesticides because the debate lacked drama. But the new formulas seemed rather safe, especially compared to arsenic. There were some cases of harm from misuse of the chemicals.
With the new pesticides, there were no documented cases of people dying or being seriously hurt by their "normal" use. Food was cheaper because of the new chemical formulations, and these new chemicals, on their face, were much safer than the forms of arsenic that had killed people in the 20s and 30s. Throughout most of the 1950s, consumers and most policy makers weren't concerned about the potential health risks in using pesticides. Silent Spring & the Environmental Movement
"Silent Spring" Ushers in the Environmental Movement
0 kommentar(er)
