http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1170/is_n2_v26/ai_18246331/
In August of 1945, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on two towns in Japan: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When Rachel Carson was writing in the 1950s, these were recent occurrences which is evident when she mentions Strontium 90. It is particularly impressive that she was so much in the time as well as significantly ahead of her time. While most people were excited by the fact that they could now use “insect bombs” to kill off all the pesky little creatures that had been bothering them and their crops, Carson was far-sighted enough to worry about the impact on our ecological system. She makes this case in a powerful way in “The Obligation to Endure”.
Carson commences by pointing out the effect of the environment on our surroundings and how man in recent time has upset the balance of this equilibrium. Take the example of Strontium 90. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (2009) Strontium 90 is “a radioactive tracer in medical and agriculture studies.” They go on to say that it was widely dispersed in the 1950s and 60s in fall-out from atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, which is what Carson is referring to when she says that the Strontium 90 is “released through nuclear explosions.” At the time that Carson was writing the book Silent Spring (1962), from which this essay is taken, there was widespread concern about the amount of Strontium 90 in cow’s milk, due to its slow fall-out and biological similarity to calcium. But a study by Larson and Ebner (1958) concluded:
“The present knowledge strongly suggests that the current and projected levels of Sr-90 in milk should not cause us concern when compared to radiation received from natural sources; but further studies are necessary to be certain if this is true.”
Carson paints a vivid picture of the difference between the natural occurrence of chemicals on our planet versus the bombardment of chemicals to which we are submitting our ecosystem. She draws our attention to the fact that not only are we not fully cognizant of what we are putting out into the atmosphere, we are also not allowing any time for our animals and plants to adapt to these substances. She writes:
“- 500 new chemicals to which the bodies of men and animals are required somehow to adapt each year, chemicals totally outside the limits of biologic experience. “
She goes on, in a poetically painful manner, to say: “Among them are many that are used in man’s war against nature.”
Man’s war against nature. We have not looked back. When Carson points out that we use “non-selective chemicals” to kill “the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’”, what she is in essence saying is that we are performing chemotherapy on the planet. In the same way that we kill both the good and the bad cells when we are treating someone for cancer.
The most spine-chilling of her observations comes when she mentions how some would like to modify the human germ plasm. She is almost definitely alluding to the social movement Eugenics, popular in the 1920s and 30s, which advocated selective breeding in humans. In itself an immensely terrifying idea, Carson adds her own horrifying twist on it: perhaps we have lost control already, due to gene mutations caused by radiation and chemicals.
However, the saddest part of all is that when we read this piece, it is clear that we have not made any significant headway where pesticides and insecticides are concerned since 1962, when Silent Spring was published. Take the following extract, which could have been written today, while we regard the devastation that is the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (with a little modification):
“Future historians may well be amazed by our distorted sense of proportion. How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind?”
Carson speaks with conviction, and as a marine biologist and zoologist, she was well-qualified to write about ecology. Her subject-matter is mostly gleaned from her own research. Fifty years on, we have seen disasters like the one in Chernobyl, but we have also seen the relative safety of nuclear energy. Unfortunately we have not seen a lessening of our assault on the environment. Largely due to Carson’s writings President Kennedy set up an environmental affairs office, known today as the Environmental Protection Agency. It is a laudable agency to have created, but like most government agencies, it lacks power and funding (although the budget for the year 2010 was up 34% from the year before).
Rachel Carson’s concerns remain so relevant in our world today. Climate change and global warming remain debatable points instead of an accepted reality. Thanks to our indiscriminate use of pesticides, insects have become resistant to many of them and some, like the corn earworm, remain a real problem to farmers (Bellinger 1996). According to Brogdon and MacAllister (2010) resistance has developed to every chemical class of insecticide. Writing from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, they tell us: “Insecticide resistance is expected to directly and profoundly affect the reemergence of vector-borne disease…”
Carson was extremely prescient, vocally and eloquently so. But because her observations were to do with caring for an environment that nobody was worried about at the time and because her predictions sounded to many like a sure way of losing money, her words fell mostly on deaf ears.
Works Cited
1. Bellinger, Robert G. Department of Entomology, Clemson University. March 1996
http://ipm.ncsu.edu/safety/factsheets/resistan.pdf
2..Brogdon, William G. and McAllister, Janet C. : “Insecticide Resistance and Vector
Control” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Feb. 23 2010 http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol4no4/brogdon.htm
3. Environmental Protection Agency www.epa.gov
4. Larson, B.L. and Ebner, K.E. “Significance of Strontium-90 in Milk: A Review”
Journal of Dairy Science Vol. 41 No. 12 1647-1662
1958 by American Dairy Science Association ®
Very well done
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