George Washington to New Hampshire, 29 December 1777 (Detail, GLC03706) Visions of the American Environment: Silent Spring and DDT by Amanda Fisher Robert F. Kennedy Hgh School Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962, pp. 20-21, 103. Published in 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, warned a nation of the dangers inherent in the continued indiscriminate use of dangerous chemicals. The following selections illustrate that warning. DDT (short for dichloro-diphenyl-trichloro-thane) was first synthesized by a German chemist in 1874, but its properties as an insecticide were not discovered until11939. Almost immediately DDT was hailed as a means of stamping out insect-borne disease and winning the farmers’ war against crop destroyers overnight. The discoverer, Paul Muller of Switzerland, won a Noble Prize. DDT is now so universally used that in most minds the product takes on the harmless aspect of the familiar. Perhaps the myth of the harmlessness of DDT rests on the fact that one of its first uses was the wartime dusting of many thousands of soldiers, refugees, and prisoners to combat lice. It is widely believed that since so many people came into extremely intimate contact with DDT and suffered no immediate ill effects the chemical must certainly be innocent of harm. . . Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where they were once filled with the beauty of bird song. This sudden silencing of the song of birds, this obliteration of the color and beauty and interest they lend to our world have come about swiftly, insidiously, and unnoticed by those whose communities are as yet unaffected. From the town of Hinsdale, Illinois, a housewife wrote in despair to one of the world’s leading ornithologists, Robert Cushman Murphy, Curator Emeritus of Birds at the American Museum of Natural History. "Here in our village the elm trees have been sprayed for several years [she wrote in 1958]. When we moved here six years ago, there was a wealth of bird life; I put up a feeder and had a steady stream of cardinals and chickadees brought their young ones in the summer. After several years of DDT spray, the town is almost devoid of robins and starlings; chickadees have not been on my shelf for two years, and this year the cardinals are gone too; the nesting population in the neighborhood seems to consist of one dove pair and perhaps a catbird family. It is hard to explain to the children that the birds have been killed off, when they have learned in school that a Federal law protects the birds from killing or capture. “Will they ever come back?” they ask, and I do not have the answer. The elms are still dying and so are the birds. Is anything being done? Can anything be done? Can I do anything?" ____ 1. Why did Paul Muller win the noble prize? Looking back with hindsight, should he have received this prestigious award? Explain your viewpoint. 2. Why was DDT at first considered harmless? What was wrong with their logic? 3. Describe the problem to which the housewife is referring. 4. Is it the responsibility of the Federal government to regulate these chemicals? Explain your viewpoint. 5. Should chemicals first have to be proven safe (the precautionary principle), or should they be considered safe until proven dangerous? Explain your viewpoint. 6. What can this housewife from Hinsdale, Illinois possibly do about this difficult and dangerous situation?