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What Is The Use Of Dangerous Pesticides In Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

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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

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