Pesticides Upset Balance of Prelature

In 1962 there was published a book which rudely interrupted the success stories being piled up by the new insecticides and pesticides; and a "great debate" was on. The book was Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.); the author, Rachel Carson, (d. 1964) a scientist, author, and brilliant observer of ecological cycles on the face of the globe. Miss Carson's book is a reasoned, well-documented, scientific, but impassioned plea against the indiscriminate use of pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, and other "agricultural chemicals" across the face of the globe. Her thesis is made clear in the following passage (quoted with permission):

The history of life on earth is a history of the interaction of living things and their surroundings. It is only within the moment of time represented by the twentieth century that one species man has acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world, and it is only within the last twenty-five years that this power has achieved such a magnitude that it endangers the whole earth and its life. The most alarming of all man's assaults is the contamination of the air, earth, rivers, and seas with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution has ram idly become almost universal.

It is widely known that radiation has done much to change the very nature of the world, the very nature of its life but it is less widely known that many man-made chemicals act in much the same way as radiation; they lie long in the soil, and enter into living organisms, passing from one to another. Or they may travel mysteriously by underground streams, emerging to combine, through the alchemy of air and sunlight, into new forms, which kill vegetation, sicken cattle, and work unknown harm on those who drink from once pure wells. As Albert Schweitzer has said, "Man can hardly recognize the devils of his own creation."

The Statistical Evidence

The statistical evidence concerning peaticides gives some substance to Miss Carson's worry. Over 60,000 pesticide formulations are registered for sale with the U. S. Department of Agriculture! Each new pesticide brought on the market is usually more "powerful," that is to say, more toxic, than the one it is intended to supplant.

The quantities of pesticides, insecticides, and other "agricultural chemicals" now produced and used sounds almost fantastic. In the early 1960's this amounted to about 700 million pounds a year; and it was predicted that the output would be increased to 7 billion pounds a year by 1970. Most of these synthetic chemicals have been used by United States farmers. Primarily they have sprayed them one or more times a year on some 30 million acres of cultivated cropland. Some has gone for other purposes application to pasturea, highway rights of way, mesquite, and other nuisance plants. Many of these materials have a long residual toxicity in soil or water.

Most pesticides are removed only in part by ordinary water treatment. Water samples show them present in most major lakes and rivers. It can be assumed that they are washed in by normal land drainage processes. Some may be dropped or drift into the water. It is known that these water-borne pesticides are responsible for some large fish kills and that they wipe out certain chains of aquatic life. But the crucial question, hotly debated, remains unsettled: At what concentration will these pesticide residues become drinking water contaminants of serious toxicity? Opinions differ.