Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002 edition, first published in 1962) was written by a marine biologist, Rachel Carson. In this book, she is warning the effects on the environment of use of dangerous pesticides that is sprinkled to farm products, especially dichloro diphenyl trichloroethane (DDT). In this book, Carson is mainly mentioning about insecticide. She has been saying that spraying insecticide is harmful. In chapter four, she uses “endless cycle” (46) to describe that effect of insecticides will circulate. For instance, if DDT infected water it will cause fishes and fishes will be eaten by birds, mink, raccoons, and this will circulate forever. Furthermore, she has mentioned that “a heavy price to pay for the temporary destruction of a few insects, but a price that will continue to be exacted as long as we insist upon using chemicals” (198). Which means that effect of killing just tiny insects will last long. By saying that insecticides are harmful from different perspectives, such as water and soil and so on, what she really wants to say is that we are “sharing our earth with other creatures” (296). Therefore, we should not try to control or dominate nature but to have a symbiotic relationship with nature. …show more content…
Carson mentions that spraying lethal dose of DDT will influence ecosystem. If it were a moderate amount, it should be safe. Therefore, there are some countries, especially in developing countries, using DDT for malaria. The reason that they are spraying DDT is that it is cheaper than any other insecticide which means it is easy to purchase it for developing countries. Moreover, World Health Organization has announced that spraying DDT indoor will play a significant role in fighting against malaria. From this information, I think that using DDT appropriately will be very efficient and less
Throughout his essay, Suzuki supports his arguments with specific examples. To justify his reasoning, the author uses the case of DDT, otherwise known as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane. This chemical compound is used as an insecticide to eliminate the population of malaria-carrying mosquitoes, which it did effectively, and saved millions of lives. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, complications arose, which led to an increase in chemicals and caused a domino effect of
Carson’s anchor text, “Silent Spring” is inspiring some people to solve the problem that could get worse in the future. For example, it makes people think we should care for the planet more because if we don’t, we could disappear in a second. In this anchor text, it is about the dangers of DDT. It is a dangerous pesticides many people try to get rid of. With this more people start to be puzzled.
In the article, “DDT Ban: Is DDT Dangerous or Beneficial” written by Lillian Forman, looks at a chemical used to fight off insects that carried disease after World War II. The chemical compound that was used to kill the unwanted pest is called dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane or DDT. The chemical was used to fight insects that carried diseases to soldiers in camps, people in refugee camps, tourists in tropical areas, and people in bombed out cities. Because the chemical was used in Europe and Asia, and save millions of lives many believed it was a miracle chemical. Though some insects like lady bugs, bees, praying mantises are useful, humans have a good reason to fear other insects. Some of the feared insects include mosquitoes, ticks, body lice, cockroaches, and flies. Mosquitos carry malaria and contagious illnesses such as West Nile virus. Ticks carry Lyme disease and body lice infect their victims with typhus. Whereas cockroaches carry germs that can cause severe gastrointestinal problems. Flies carry even more dangerous pathogens, some of which cause deadly meningitis. Insects are harmful to more than just human health, locusts periodically destroy crops, termites eat away wooden structures, and moths ruin cloth.
As many public issues began to arise over the use of pesticides, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring. Ira Baldwin reviewed the book revealing that it is one sided and only tells the negative side of using pesticides. She did significant research on the issues that go along with the use of pesticides but left out the entirety of the benefits and contributions of their use. It does nothing to indicate all of the positive ways that pesticides benefit the lives of humans daily. In his article, Ira says, “I can understand that the author felt it necessary to
“No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people have done it themselves.” In the descriptive nonfiction, anchor text, “from a Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson she explains the effects of the chemical used by humans called Pesticides. This man made chemical is designed to kill crop eating insects, but they can be toxic to many including humans. Pesticides cause vegetation to wither and streams to become contaminated.
The concept of what is humane and what isn’t, plagues our world and easily influences what our society needs. The war on chemicals sparks a stimulating debate, which is splitting our populace directly down the middle. In the environmental book, Silent Spring, Rachel Carson presents a one-sized argument in which she states that pesticides are one of the roots of environmental ruin. Carson deeply advocates the control over pests by limiting the use of pesticides, which she is truly certain that the chemicals are doing more detriment in our world rather than aiding her. Although there is little to no praise directed towards pesticides, the chemicals ensure an imperative purpose that could war outweigh the liabilities.
Integrating mosquitoes to the ecosystem, can bring a huge repercussions to humanity. So the best way to protect humans is killing the mosquitoes before the can transfer any type of diseases, the best way of doing it, is using the DDT. It is affective, as nontoxic to humans and inexpensive to produce. In 1962, Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring was published. It cataloged the environmental impacts of widespread DDT spraying in the United States and questioned the logic of releasing large amounts of potentially dangerous chemicals into the environment without understanding their effects on the environment or human health. The book claimed that DDT and other pesticides had been shown to cause cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds. According to Rachel Carson’s it seems that it only matter when it is a threat for the United States, because diseases carried by mosquitoes does not affect directly to the United States citizens. But it affects the rest of the countries, especially Latin America and Africa. Under U.S law, pesticide are not permitted to be used in the Unites States can still manufactured and export in the U.S for use elsewhere. That’s a clear example of environment racism, why it is not permitted to be used in the U.S and it is permitted to export to others countries? I have always asked that way every single disease on earth start in Africa, it because of this environmental privilege that some countries have from another. The United States knows the environmental and humanitarians effects of his products to the Latin America and Africa society but they do not care, they keep sending “poison” to other countries and those countries in order to protect their citizens they keep buying those products because they do not know the secondary effects of the
In the book, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson warns people about the use of insecticide. When people use pesticide to kill insects it leads to problems because it would transfer from people to animals. Carson shows us when the earth is contaminated with pollution, it is going to take generation after generation to fix. When the chemicals were discovered to make pesticides it was founded by an accident. People started to use pesticides to kill insects, but the pesticide started to make people and animals to get sick or die. The pesticide would enter the body animals or people and it would transfer to the offspring of the animals or human beings. According to Carson pesticide would go to the water supply where people drink from and get sick or die. Carson suggests that we should not stop using pesticide, but to limit our usage of pesticide. I agree with Carson that we should limit the use of pesticides. People around the world she cut back on the usage of pesticides because it hurts the health of human beings, animals, and water supply.
Thesis: In Silent Spring Rachel Carson starts an environmental movement by informing the public of the dangers of pesticides, which causes a shift in views towards pesticides and the harm they do to the environment.
Carson describes how as humans there is a lack of awareness in the lives around us. People have been trying to modify nature to best fit their needs for a very long time, but there is a growing disconnect between what the benefit really is. When humans try to destroy certain
During the early twentieth century, advances in chemistry produced a battery of pesticides that were originally hailed for raising crop yields and controlling disease-carrying insects. The most famous of these pesticides was DDT. DDT’s discoverer, Paul Muller, even won the Nobel Prize. However, people were oblivious to the dangers pesticides posed to people and the environment. For example, when DDT is repeatedly sprayed, toxic amounts begin to accumulate in the environment. Rachel Carson, a marine biologist, was greatly concerned about such dangers, and wrote Silent Spring to raise public awareness. In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson brought awareness of such dangers, reporting that even small doses of pesticides applied regularly can build up to enormous quantities over time. Once accumulated, pesticides present in the environment pose a threat to people and animals alike. For example, many pesticides are carcinogens that Carson attributes to the spike in cancer rates during the mid-twentieth century. Animals are not immune from the deadly effect of pesticides. In Silent Spring, Carson describes entire lakes that became almost completely devoid of life after DDT was applied (Carson 45-49). Silent Spring triggered a powerful public response immediately after its publication. Many people were convinced of the hazards of pesticide use, but some accused Carson of exaggerating the danger. Despite its critics, Silent Spring eventually triggered an outburst of environmentalism that
Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), is a controversial chemical that has been adopted for use by African Heads of State and Government in attempt to treat victims of the disease malaria. In the past, DDT was widely used during World War II as a means of treatment for malaria among civilians and soldiers; later, farmers started using DDT as an agriculture insecticide. American biologist Rachael Carson wrote about the consequences of using DDT on the environment as well as public health, and her work, The Silent Spring, sparked the environmental movement; not long afterwards, DDT was banned from agricultural use in the United States, but was still commonly used to control malaria.
In the book “Silent Spring”, the author Rachel Carson shows a detailed analysis of what happens when you rely too heavily on insecticides. In the beginning of the book, Carson explains how insecticides harm the natural processes in the environment. She talks about how water and soil is impacted. Then she talks about how massive insecticide spraying campaigns can inadvertently hurt other organisms such as birds, salmon, and humans. One of the scary things I learned was that back in the days, the government approved of spraying DDT from airplanes in hopes that it would control gypsy moth populations. It seems like they were trying to find a quick and easy solution that they did not consider the long-term consequences of their actions. She also
After World War II American’s really advanced technologically, meaning everything went along with it like pesticides and herbicides. Scientist discovered that they could alter compounds easily in a lab, making a variety of new “harmless” pesticides. Carson does not approve of these advances solely for the reason that the products being produced and used are exactly what they are saying, which is harmless. In every case that a pesticide or a herbicide was used, it did its job while harming organisms that were supposed to have no affect to the chemicals. Side effects were something that was expected to occur if exposed to doses of these chemicals. When DDT was used in war to help aid against lice for our soldiers, we believed that since no immediate
DDT is an effective control mechanism for containing the spread of malaria. However, when used as a control mechanism for agriculture, it has been shown to cause environmental harm to ecosystems in the area. This has lead to many misconceptions that DDT is strictly a harmful chemical that only leads to negative outcomes. However, there is evidence that shows the opposite when DDT is used as a control mechanism in controlling the spread of malaria. DDT should be used as a control mechanism against malaria as long as the activity of spraying is closely monitored and contained. DDT should not be used as the only answer to solving the problem of malaria but should play an important role. The purpose of this