Rachel Carson
Biologist · 1907-1964 · Biology, stage 3: Meet the biologists
Documented how persistent pesticides move through food chains and accumulate in wildlife.
Overview
Carson was a marine biologist who worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service and wrote three books about the ocean before turning to pesticides. Silent Spring assembled the published evidence that synthetic organochlorines such as DDT persist in the environment, concentrate as they pass up food chains, and reach levels in predatory birds that impair reproduction. The argument is ecological rather than toxicological: the case rests on how a chemical moves through a system, not on a single dose being lethal. The book was attacked by the chemical industry on publication and was followed by a federal review that upheld its findings, and it is the usual starting point for the modern environmental movement. Read Silent Spring; The Sea Around Us shows the writer she was before it.
Where to start reading
Silent Spring 1962
The case that persistent pesticides accumulate through food chains and damage populations far from where they are applied.
The Sea Around Us 1951
An account of ocean formation, currents, and life for a general readership, and the book that made her financially independent enough to write the next one.
Part of
Sources
- Rachel Carson Wikipedia
- Silent Spring Wikipedia
- Ecological Society of America Ecological Society of America
