Free Study Guide for Silent Spring by Rachel Carson - Book Summary

SILENT SPRING BOOK SUMMARY

CHAPTER 10 - Indiscriminately from the Skies

Summary

The use of airplanes to spray insecticides has increased dramatically. At the same time, the average citizen’s attitude toward poison has changed. Instead of seeing it as extremely dangerous, something to be kept in a careful place and used in limited ways for specific purposes, most people are now comfortable handling poisons as if they were relatively safe. People have begun, however, to have misgivings about aerial spraying. There are two massive aerial campaigns that are largely responsible for this change of attitude--the campaign against the gypsy moth in the northeastern states and the campaign against the fire ant in the southern states. Both insects were accidentally imported into the United States. Before the campaigns of the late 1950s, no one saw either insect as a major threat. When the campaigns were halted after widespread destruction, no dent was made in the populations of the targeted insects.

They gypsy moth is native to Europe. It was accidentally released into the United States in 1869 and gradually it spread throughout the northeastern states. It spread, but it was also contained by a variety of methods. Thirteen parasites and predators were imported as a means of combating the spread of the gypsy moth by natural means. This method was successful in containing the moths. It was only a year after pronouncing the success of the natural method that the Agriculture Department announced a plan to eradicate the gypsy moth entirely. It began a chemical war on the gypsy moth in 1956, spraying nearly one million acres of land. Complaints of damage started pouring in. Conservationists expressed concern over the Department’s plans to spray huge areas. In 1957, the Department announced it would spray three million acres. Officials shrugged off all complaints.

The Long Island area, a densely populated region, was one of those areas included in the spraying campaign. The officials announced that it was necessary to spray densely populated areas despite the fact that the gypsy moth was a forest dweller. In 1957, the Department of Agriculture and Markets sprayed DDT-in-fuel oil on these highly populated areas. People were sprayed, livestock was sprayed, bodies of water were sprayed. The rate of death among livestock and wildlife was phenomenal. A citizens’ group tried to bring a court injunction to stop further spraying, but they were denied the preliminary injunction. When the injunction reached the Supreme Court, the court said that since the spraying had already happened, the injunction was moot. The suit did succeed in focusing public attention.

One of the most alarming areas of concern had to do with the dairy industry. One farm provides a good case in point. The farmer had requested the Department not spray her farm and had agreed to let inspectors see her farm and spray selected areas. Nevertheless, her farm was sprayed twice. Milk samples revealed......

Notes

Here, Carson concentrates on two major air-spraying campaigns as a way of illustrating the effects of insecticide spraying. She details the insecticide campaign against the gypsy moth in the northeast and that against the fire ant in the southern states. In choosing the method of providing illustrative examples of the results of insecticide campaigns, Carson enables the reader to see the details of what she has so carefully built up as a general truth--that insecticide campaigns are ineffective and extraordinarily and globally damaging.

Carson continues her strategy of providing a wide range of authorities. She quotes from scientific and government sources and.......

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Silent Spring Study Guide - Free BookNotes Summary

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