Rachel Carson was an established writer and well respected scientist when she received a letter from Olga Owens Huckins of Duxbury, Massachusetts. Huckins had written Carson to tell her about a letter to the editor she had written that had been printed in the Boston Herald. Huckins’ letter to the editor told how the government had sprayed her bird sanctuary with DDT to control mosquitoes. She told of the horror of finding dozens of dead birds. Huckins begged Carson to use her influence and connections in Washington to do something to save her birds. Years latter Rachel Carson would write Huckins, telling her, that it was her letter that had inspired the book Silent Spring.

Carson’s books focused on the connection between the environment and man. She said, “I have tried to say that all the life of the planet is inter-related, that each species has it own ties to others, and all are related to earth.” When she wrote The Sea Around Us, that connectivity held such appeal that the book became a Book-of-the-Month selection and remained on the New York Times best seller list for eighty-one weeks. However, with her book Silent Spring that connectivity would be attacked before the book even came to press. The Chemical industry would try to have the book suppressed. Carson set out, in Silent Spring, to show the senseless destruction of nature when a society blindly pursues technological progress without concern for the environment. She illustrated the connection between the death of wildlife and the over use of pesticides. She said, “We are subjecting whole populations to exposure to chemicals which animal experiments have proved to be extremely poisonous and in many cases cumulative in their effects. These exposures now begin at or before birth and -unless we change our methods- will continue through the lifetime of those living now.” She advised that the policy should be, “Spray as little as you possibly can” rather than “Spray to the limit of your capacity.” Despite the controversy, the book was published in September 1962, and by the end of the year more than a quarter million copies had been sold.

Before Carson’s book, there was a conservation movement, but if focused on setting aside land as national parks and the conservation of resources. Ecology was not yet household word with Americans. But this was the early sixties, a decade that would become known for activism. The public responded with outrage. President John F, Kennedy created a special government group to investigate the use and control of pesticides under the direction of the Presidents Science Advisory Committee. CBS Reports televised an hour special on the book. On May 15, 1963, The Science Advisory Committee released its report on pesticides, validating the issues highlighted in Silent Spring. By the time Carson testified before Congress, grassroots environmental organization had already formed. The actions of these activists would eventually lead to establishment of The Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.

Rachel Carson’s role in inspiring a movement has not been forgotten by either her friends or her foes. As the country prepares for centennial celebrations of her birth, fifty-three congressmen voted “no” on a bill that would name the post office in her hometown after her. In the Senate, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin proposed a resolution celebrating Carson for her “legacy of scientific rigor coupled with poetic sensibility." It was blocked from coming to the floor by Sen. Tom Coburn. It started with a letter to the editor, which led to a book that gave birth to a movement. Rachel Carson’s legacy lives on in each new regulation passed to prevent the misuse or abuse of chemicals.



Silent Spring