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Rachel Carson: The Woman Who Changed Environmental LawsBy: Selena ClementsRachel Carson was a writer and biologist with a lyrical determination who saw it as her mission to share her observations with a wider audience. She was a slight, soft-spoken woman who preferred walking the Maine shoreline to stalking the corridors of power. Carson played a central role in starting the environmental movement by forcing government and chemical businesses to confront the dangers of pesticides, particularly DDT. Her best-known book, Silent Spring, led to a presidential commission by John F. Kennedy that largely endorsed her findings. Her book would go on to launch the environmental movement, which provoked the passage of the Clean Air Act of 1963, the Wilderness Act of 1964, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act in 1972 and led to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. But who was Rachel Carson and what did she do to change major environmental laws?Carson was born on May 27th, 1907 in the rural town of Springdale, Pennsylvania. Her father was an insurance salesman, and her mother came from an old Pennsylvania family and was a teacher before marriage. Carson had two older siblings, Marian and Robert. They were a close family, but poor. They were rich in other ways, however. The Carson family lived on a sixty-four-acre piece of land near the Allegheny River. The land had apple and pear tree orchards, a vegetable garden, and a chicken coup. As a child, Carson loved stories about animals, especially by her favorite author, the British writer and naturalist Beatrix Potter. Thanks to her mother, she also had a fondness for nature. Her mother would educate her about everything in nature.When Carson was eight years old, she started writing her own books. At age ten her mother encouraged her to enter a popular contest in the children’s magazine St. Nicolas and became a published author. By fourteen Carson was submitting her works to magazines for sale. In 1925 she graduated high school at the top of her class and won a scholarship to Pennsylvania College for Women, now Chatham University. Upon entering the university, Carson originally majored in English until she took a biology class. Her professor saw her potential and persuaded Carson to switch majors. Without hesitation she did just that and switched from English to biology. In 1929 Carson graduated college with a bachelor’s degree in Biology. She was only one of three students to achieve magna cum laude that graduating class. That summer Carson landed a research spot at the Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. During her eight weeks on the project, she studied invertebrates. This time on the research project is where she finally found her passion.Carson processed to go on to graduate school at John Hopkins University to obtain a master’s degree in Zoology. She was lucky enough to receive a full scholarship. But it was only for her first year there. During her second year, Carson had to take a job due to financial issues and became a part-time student. She found work in a laboratory researching the genetics of rats and fruit flies. In 1932 Carson graduated with her master’s and took another research project position with the Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. She had plans to continue at John Hopkins to obtain a Ph.D. in Zoology, but she was forced to give it up when her father and sister became ill. Her sister recovered, however, her father did not and passed away in 1935. This took a toll on Carson. After the death of her father, Carson had to take in her mother, sister, and two nieces. After the summer in Woods Hole was over, she took a job with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. Before she could start working at the USBF, Carson had to take the Civil Service exams. She ended up scoring sixty-one points in wildlife biologists, seventy-five points in aquatic biologists, and seventy-six and a half points in parasitology. Carson outscored all other applicants and became the second woman to be hired by the USBF. Her official position was overseeing publications of the agency’s conservation work, but her actual title was “aquatic biologist.” During her workdays, she would analyze data about fish populations, writing reports, and drafting brochures for the public. When Carson first starting writing for the USBF she would us “R.L. Carson” so people would take her work more seriously because it appeared that the articles were written by a man.In 1937 her sister Marian died of pneumonia, leaving Carson the sole breadwinner of the family. To have money she moved to Silver Springs, Maryland and decided to sell her World of the Waters essay that she wrote for the government brochure to the Atlantic Monthly magazine. After the essay was published, Carson was contacted by an editor at a New York publishing house and was asked to write a book on ocean life. Instead of writing one book, she wrote three. The first book covered coastal life, the second covered a look at life in the open ocean, and the final book explored the deepest parts of the sea. In November of 1941, her hard work paid off and Sea-Wind was published. Even though the book was well praised, due the to the U.S. entering WWII only 2,000 copies were sold.During the war Carson qualified as an air raid warden and moved to Chicago in 1942 when the USBF was relocated. Eventually a position opened in Washington D.C. and she moved back to the east coast, where she rose through the ranks over the next few years. However, Carson was unhappy with her job at the USBF. It also did not help that in 1952 her niece Marjorie gave birth to a son, Roger. Marjorie was unmarried and Carson worried about the scandal this would cause. She arranged matters so that it could be suggested that Marjorie had been briefly married. Carson never had any children of her own, but when her niece suddenly died in 1957, she adopted Roger, who was only five years old.In July of 1951 Carson’s second book, The Sea Around Us, was released. This book grew very popular and gave the general public a glimpse at what life under the sea was like and its evolutionary history. The Sea Around Us stayed on the best-seller list for eighty-six weeks, with thirty-two of those weeks at number one. In the mid-1950s Carson moved to the coast of Maine. She resigned from her job at the USBF to concentrate on writing her third and final book in the series, The Edge of The Sea, which was released in 1955. At age forty-four, Carson had two of the country’s best-selling books.DDTDDT was synthesized in 1874, but it was not until 1939 when Swiss biochemist, Paul Hermann Muller, discovered its potency as an all-purpose insecticide. In the 1930s the total amount of pesticides prayed in the United States was about 500 million pounds a year. During WWII this pesticide was used to help curb insect-borne diseases, such as malaria, typhus, yellow fever, bubonic plague, and other diseases. Due to this, the use of DDT became a common practice among American troops. By the end of WWII, the amount of DDT being used had almost doubled to just under one billion pounds a year. One the war was over, the use expanded to farmers to be used on crops to stop pests from destroying their stock.DDT is easily dissolved in organic solvents, such as fast or oils. Because of this, DDT is known to cause bioaccumulation. Since this pesticide remains in the food chain, levels are often highest in the bodies of animals near the top of the food chain. Populations of the peregrine falcon declined steeply due the use this pesticide. One strand of pesticide caused birds to lay eggs with thinner eggshells, which led to population losses. Biologists were also investigating the ability of pesticide chemicals to cause cancer in humans, as well as animals. According the Environmental Protection Agency, DDT can cause liver damage, including liver cancer, nervous system damage, congenital disabilities, and reproductive harm. In 1967 the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit campaign group, was set up to fight against DDT. By 1970 Hungary, Norway, and Sweden had banned the use of this pesticide. The United States soon followed by banning both the use and production of DDT in 1972.The Great Cranberry ScareIn the mid-1950s aminothiazole was being used to eliminate sedges, rushes, horsetails, and deep-rooted grasses. However, this herbicide should only be used the week after the November harvest in order to keep it off the finished fruit. Somehow the chemical got into a few cranberries and spoiled a barrel. On November 9th, 1959 Arthur S. Flemming, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, informed the public that a small portion of the cranberry crop from the Pacific Northwest had recently tested positive for herbicide. He urged the consumer (housewife) that “if she couldn’t determine the origin of her berries, to be on the safe side, she doesn’t buy.”A 50 million dollar a year business collapsed over-night. The mid-November sales of cranberries dropped 63% from the previous year and canned sales were down 79%. However, days before Thanksgiving, Flemming’s department allowed the release of cranberry lots that tested clean. Over that and the spring of 1960 the government created a ten-million-dollar fund to compensate cranberry farmers. The market began to recover the next fall.Carson’s Great ContributionCarson understood that insects were growing immunity to pesticides and the use of DDT would ultimately fail. This in turn would cause people to use more of the pesticide and further harm wild-life and ultimately our own health. She was not against using pesticides. What she was against was the use of poisons that had untold and unanticipated consequences of their use. When the Department of Agriculture doused 20 million acres in the South to kill ants in 1957, they also killed the wildlife there. This greatly angered Carson and the hunting and fishing community. Due to this incident, several county agricultural agencies dropped the program. Even though Carson was furious she did not pursue the issue right away due to her other obligations at the time.The Cranberry Scare of 1959 was just the push Carson needed. She decided shortly after the incident to write about the harm pesticides caused to both the environment and to human health. Thanks to her contacts in the government, she was able to get copies of several reports on pesticide use and started to gather and organize the large amounts of information that she received. After several years Carson released, what would ultimately be her final book, Silent Spring in 1962. Throughout her book, she slowly but surely piled up the evidence against pesticides. One example given in the book was the use of dieldrin in Sheldon, Illinois where the goal was the eliminate the Japanese beetle. Laboratory tests had shown that dieldrin was fifty times more poisonous to birds than DDT. Many different species in the area were nearly wiped out and 90% of cats in the area perished as well. Carson spent the last four chapters of her book detailing the effects of pesticides on human health. Silent Spring sold more than one million copies in the first two years of its release and was backed by numerous scientists. Carson endured mass criticism from pesticide companies and in 1962 she made a rebuttal to them about how they were wrong and urged for change in how pesticides were tested for safeness. One chemical company, Velsicol, threatened to sue Carson’s publisher and the magazines that printed extracts from her book. But a New York Magazine’s lawyer told Velsicol, “Everything in those articles has been checked and is true. Go ahead and sue.” In the end, Velsicol back down and never moved forward the threat. In 1962, despite sponsors pulling out, CBS aired a documentary on Silent Spring. During the show scientists that were opposed to her book were brought to answer questions. Most of the questions could not be answered, which greatly favored Carson and just made the general public want to know more about the effect’s pesticides had on the environment and their own health.Not only did Silent Spring create awareness, but it also got the attention of the U.S. government. The subject even found its way into one of President Kennedy’s press conferences. A special science committee was created, and they convened to review all federal policies for pesticides. In May of 1963, Carson traveled to Capitol Hill to testify before the Senate Committee. She outlined the damage caused by synthetic pesticides and argued for strict regulations on spraying. During the hearing Carson stated that the laws “should be reduced to the minimum strength required and pesticides with long-lasting residues should be phased out.” In the end, the Science Committee proved her findings right.While Carson was deep in her writing of Silent Spring her mother passed away in 1958 from a stroke. As if that were hard enough to deal with, she also developed cancer during the development of Silent Spring as well. Despite her treatment, the cancer kept spreading. Carson died on April 14th, 1964 at the age fifty-six due to a heart attack. Some of her ashes were spread over her mother’s grave, the rest was spread over the place she loved the most, the vast wide ocean.The Memory and Influence of Rachel Carson in Today’s WorldDuring the summer of 2006 at Yale University, an exhibition in homage to Carson was held at the university’s Beinecke Library titled “Rachel Carson: The World and All the Wonder.” The title was chosen from Carson’s book A Sense of Wonder. The exhibition featured her life, her works, and all her contributions to conservation and ecology. Patrons were able to view Carson’s research and field notes, sketches, drafts, manuscripts, correspondences with other writers and scientists, and countless photographs. The exhibition even displayed her master’s thesis for John Hopkins University. Yale University was even able to obtain illustrations for Silent Spring and all her books on the sea. To emphasize Carson’s inspiration on others, Beinecke Library created a section from authors that her work has a major impact on. Such authors were Annie Dillard, Peter Matthiessen, Hall Borland, and Al Gore.From November 15th, 2012 to January 7th, 2013 the University of Iowa Libraries and Office of Sustainability presented a symposium that showed the connection between the state of Iowa and Silent Spring and Shirley Briggs, who was from the state of Iowa and worked with Carson at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services in the 1940s. UI set up the symposium in their Phillips Hall Auditorium. However, they decided to host the opening reception in the Sciences Library. Due to space in the auditorium the exhibit had to be split between two places. Brigg’s portion was placed in the Sciences Library while Carson’s was in the Phillips Hall Auditorium. Both exhibits displayed photos, writings, art works, and various memorabilia. A short film titled “A Sense of Wonder” was shown at mid-day on November 14th, 2012 at the Iowa City Public Library. This film highlighted Carson’s final days as she battled cancer.One collection of Rachel Carson that is still available today is the Rachel Carson Collection that is housed in the Chatham College Archives. This collection is apart of the college’s Digital Library Collection. It contains photographs and select documents that were digitized and made readily available to anyone that can access them. Most of the documents that the collection contains are of her enrollment and life at the Pennsylvania College for Women or Chatham University as it is known by today. The photographs are from Carson’s career as an environmentalist and author, as well as of her performing her field research at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania and Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts. There are also images of the covers from Carson’s books and monographs, her awards, portraits, and various memorials in her honor.Just like Abraham Lincoln’s home that he grew up in, Carson’s childhood home has become an important museum to showcase her early life. This home, the Rachel Carson Homestead, is a Pittsburgh Historical Landmark and is in the National Register of Historical Places. In 1975 a group of individuals wanted to maintain and furnish the house. They set out to turn the Carson home into a non-profit organization, which they succeeded in doing. The sole purpose of the RCHA is to continue to preserve the birthplace and early home of Rachel Carson. The homestead promotes the legacy of Carson and provides environmental education programs for both adults and children. In June 2009, RCHA finally obtained the title to the Homestead property, however, there was a catch. The RCHA is required to maintain its non-profit education mission. This mission is still in place today. Due to how old the home was, in 2012 the RCHA was forced to make some much-needed renovations. These renovations in what you will see now if you visit the home. Stepping into the Carson home will transform visitors back to days of Rachel’s childhood. Being able to walk the halls and climb the same steps as she gives people the feeling of being in her shoes. It also gives patrons a sense of what drove Carson in her passion for wanting to protect the environment. The RCHA is visited by 1000s of tourists each year, according to a RCHA board member. However, with the current situation from the global pandemic of Covid-19, the Homestead is only offering virtual events and programs.Perhaps the most important contribution in Carson’s name is the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany. This center is an international, interdisciplinary center for research and education in the environmental humanities. It was founded in 2009 as a joint initiative of Ludwig-Maximillian’s University-Munich and the German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology. The center is also supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The main purpose of research is for the concerning interaction between human agents and nature. The goal is to strengthen the role of humanities in current political and scientific debates about the environment.The RCC focuses on six main thematic clusters of research: National Disasters and Cultures of Risk; Resource Use and Conservation; Ecological Imperialism; Transformation of Landscapes; Environmental Ethics, Politics, and Movements; and Environmental Knowledge and Knowledge Societies. The National Disasters and Cultures of Risk research examines how different societies have historically handled natural catastrophes. Resource use and Conservation investigates practices and discourses concerning natural resource use and conservation. Research from Ecological Imperialism explores the environmental impact of colonial and neo-colonial regimes. The Transformation of Landscapes focuses on physical, cultural, economic, social, and political factors, as well as consequences related to the transformation of agricultural landscapes. The purpose of the Environmental Ethics, Politics, and Movements is to examine ethical and political concerns, such as environmental justice and sustainability. Lastly, the Environmental Knowledge and Knowledge Societies concerns its research with the role of academic scholarship in the construction and distribution of knowledge about nature. The RCC hosts numerous series of public colloquia, conferences, and workshops every year. However, due to the current pandemic all seminars are virtual. Since RCC is apart of the German Museum it also has an outreach program that develops exhibitions for various environmental concerns, environmental history, and important environmentalists.Carson’s talents and drive lead her all the way to top and was able to reach people who might not otherwise been interested in science or nature. She opened their eyes to the problems and challenges facing the natural world and introduced many people to the concept of conservation. Numerous laws were changed as a result of Silent Spring. President Nixon set up the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. Throughout the 1970s, new laws passed to protect the air, water, and human health. Carson wanted to show that science was for everyone, not just for men. In her 1952 acceptance speech at the National Book Awards, Carson stated “The materials of science are the materials of life itself…It is impossible to understand man without understanding his environment.” Meaning it is impossible to understand our own biochemistry and future without first understanding the makeup of nature and the environment.Works CitedBaker, Dorie. “Exhibition in Homage to Rachel Carson at Yale’s Beinecke Library.” YaleNews, Yale University, 3 May 2006, . Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. A Mariners Books, 2002. Hoopla. , Nancy. Rachel Carson: Environmental Crusader, Gereth Stevens Publishing LLLP. 2015. ProQuest eBook Central. . Ferrari, Michelle, director and producer. American Experience: Rachel Carson. Amazon. PBS. 2017. . Lallanilla, Marc. “What Is the Story About the Banned Pesticide DDT?” The Spruce. The Spruce. 18 Oct. 2019. . McCrory, George. “Symposium, Exhibit Focus on Iowa Connection to ‘Silent Spring’.” Iowa Now, University of Iowa, 11 Nov. 2012. .“Rachel Carson.” Rachel Carson Collection, Chatham University; Jenny King Mellon Library, “Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society.” Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society-LMU Munich, Ludwig-Maximilians University, . “RCHA History.” Rachel Carson Homstead, RCHA, , Michael. “The Great Cranberry Scare of 1959.” The New Yorker. The New Yorker. 19 Nov. 2018. . ................
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