Lost Woods (23 page)

27

[1962]

Women’s National Press Club Speech

SILENT SPRING
WAS SERIALIZED
in three summer issues of the
New Yorker
in 1962 and published in late September. The high level of public interest that surrounded the book included notice by President John F. Kennedy, who convened a special panel of the President’s Science Advisory Committee to look into the problem, the introduction of legislation in several states seeking to halt the spraying of pesticides without citizen notification, and general uproar in the agricultural chemical industry and among government scientists.

Carson took many of her critics in stride, but she could not abide those that damned the book without having read it. As debate grew more acrimonious in the fall of 1962, Carson’s public remarks grew sharper, culminating in her appearance at the Women’s National Press Club in December. In this speech, Carson attacked the smugly self-satisfied chemical industry and exposed their counterparts in industry-funded research institutions.

With national television cameras rolling, Carson charged that basic scientific truths were being compromised “to serve the gods of profit and production.”

MY TEXT THIS AFTERNOON
is taken from the
Globe Times
of Bethlehem, Pa., a news item in the issue of October 12. After describing in detail the adverse reactions to
Silent Spring
of the farm bureaus in two Pennsylvania counties, the reporter continued: “No one in either county farm office who was talked to today had read the book, but all disapproved of it heartily.”

This sums up very neatly the background of much of the noisier comment that has been heard in this unquiet autumn following the publication of
Silent Spring.
In the words of an editorial in the
Bennington Banner
, “The anguished reaction to
Silent Spring
has been to refute statements that were never made.” Whether this kind of refutation comes from people who actually have not read the book or from those who find it convenient to misrepresent my position I leave it to others to judge.

Early in the summer – as soon as the first installment of the book appeared in the
New Yorker
– public reaction to
Silent Spring
was reflected in a tidal wave of letters – letters to Congressmen, to newspapers, to Government agencies, to the author. These letters continue to come and I am sure represent the most important and lasting reaction.

Even before the book was published, editorials and columns by the hundred had discussed it all over the country. Early reaction in the chemical press was somewhat moderate, and in fact I have had fine support from some segments of both chemical and agricultural press. But in general, as was to be expected, the industry press was not happy. By late summer the printing presses of the pesticide industry and their trade associations had begun to pour out the first of a growing stream of booklets designed to protect and repair the somewhat battered image of pesticides. Plans are announced for quarterly mailings to opinion leaders and for monthly news stories to newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. Speakers are addressing audiences everywhere.

It is clear that we are all to receive heavy doses of tranquilizing information, designed to lull the public into the sleep from which
Silent Spring
so rudely awakened it. Some definite gains toward a saner policy of pest control have been made in recent months. The important issue now is whether we are to hold and extend those gains.

The attack is now falling into a definite pattern and all the well-known devices are being used. One obvious way to try to weaken a cause is to discredit the person who champions it. So the masters of invective and insinuation have been busy: I am a “bird lover – a cat lover – a fish lover” – a priestess of nature – a devotee of a mystical cult having to do with laws of the universe which my critics consider themselves immune to.

Another piece in the pattern of attack largely ignores
Silent Spring
and concentrates on what I suppose would be called the soft sell, the soothing reassurances to the public. Some of these acknowledge the correctness of my facts, but say that the incidents I reported occurred some time in the past, that industry and Government are well aware of them and have long since taken steps to prevent their recurrence. It must be assumed that the people who read these comforting reports read nothing else in their newspapers. Actually, pesticides have figured rather prominently in the news in recent months: some items trivial, some almost humorous, some definitely serious.

These reports do not differ in any important way from the examples I cited in
Silent Spring
, so if the situation is under better control there is little evidence of it.

What are some of the ways pesticides have made recent news?

1. The
New York Post
of October 12 reported the seizure by the Food and Drug Administration of more than a quarter of a million pounds of potatoes – 346,000 pounds to be exact – in the Pacific Northwest. Agents said they contained about 4 times the permitted residues of aldrin and dieldrin.

2. In September, Federal investigators had to look into the charge that vineyards near the Erie County thruway had been damaged by weed-killer chemicals sprayed along the highway. Similar reports came from Iowa.

3. In California, fumes from lawns to which a chemical had been applied were so obnoxious that the fire department was called to drench the lawns with water. Thereupon the fumes increased so greatly that 11 firemen were hospitalized.

4. Last summer the newspapers widely reported the story of some 5000 Turkish children suffering from an affliction called
porphyria
characterized by severe liver damage and the growth of hair on face, hands, and arms, giving a monkey-like appearance to victims. This was traced to the consumption of wheat treated with a chemical fungicide. The wheat had been intended for planting, rather than for direct consumption. But the people were hungry and perhaps did not understand the restriction. This was an unplanned occurrence in a far part of the world but it is well to remember that large quantities of seed are similarly treated here.

5. You will remember that the bald eagle, our national emblem, is seriously declining in numbers. The Fish and Wildlife Service recently reported significant facts that may explain why this is so. The Service has determined experimentally how much DDT is required to kill an eagle. It has also discovered that eagles found dead in the wild have lethal doses of DDT stored in their tissues.

6. This fall also, Canadian papers carried a warning that woodcock being shot during the hunting season in New Brunswick were carrying residues of heptachlor and might be dangerous if used as food. Woodcock are migratory birds. Those that nest in New Brunswick winter in the southern United States, where heptachlor has been used extensively in the campaign against the fire ant. The residues in the birds were 3 to 3.5 ppm. The legal tolerance for heptachlor is ZERO.

7. Biologists of the Massachusetts Fish and Game Department have recently reported that fish in the Framingham Reservoir on the outskirts of Boston contain DDT in amounts as high as 75 ppm, or more than 10 times the legal tolerance. This is, of course, a public water supply for a large number of people.

8. One more item – an Associated Press dispatch of November 16th: a sad commentary on technology gone wrong. A Federal Court Jury awarded a New York State farmer
$12,360
for damages to his potato crop. The damage was done by a chemical that was supposed to halt sprouting. Instead, the sprouts grew inward.

We are told also that chemicals are never used unless tests have shown them to be safe. This, of course, is not an accurate statement. I am happy to see that the Department of Agriculture plans to ask the Congress to amend the FIFRA to do away with the provision that now permits a company to register a pesticide under protest, even though a question of health or safety has been raised by the Department.

We have other reminders that unsafe chemicals get into use – County Agents frequently have to amend or rescind earlier advices on the use of pesticides. For example, a letter was recently sent out to farmers recalling stocks of a chemical in use as a cattle spray. In September, “unexplained losses” occurred following its use. Several suspected production lots were recalled but the losses continued. All outstanding lots of the chemical have now had to be recalled.

Inaccurate statements in reviews of
Silent Spring
are a dime a dozen, and I shall only mention one or two examples.
Time
, in its discussion of
Silent Spring
, described accidental poisonings from pesticides as
very rare.
Let’s look at a few figures. California, the only state that keeps accurate and complete records, reports from 900 to 1000 cases of poisoning from agricultural chemicals per year. About 200 of these are from parathion alone. Florida has experienced so many poisonings recently that this state has attempted to control the use of the more dangerous chemicals in residential areas. As a sample of conditions in other countries, parathion was responsible for 100 deaths in India in 1958 and takes an average of 336 deaths a year in Japan.

It is also worthy of note that during the years 1959, 1960, and 1961, airplane crashes involving crop-dusting planes totaled 873. In these accidents 135 pilots lost their lives. This very fact has led to some significant research by the Federal Aviation Agency through its Civil Aeromedical Unit – research designed to find out
why
so many of these planes crashed. These medical investigators took as their basic premise the assumption that spray poisons accumulate in the pilot’s body – inside the cells, where they are difficult to detect.

These researchers recently reported that they had confirmed two very significant facts: 1. That there is a causal relation between the build-up of toxins in the cell and the onset of sugar diabetes. 2. That the build-up of poisons within the cell interferes with the rate of energy production in the human body.

I am, of course, happy to have this confirmation that cellular processes are not so “irrelevant” as a certain scientific reviewer of
Silent Spring
has declared them to be.