Silent Spring @ 50

[Marvin S]

The False Crises of Rachel Carson - edited by Roger Meiners, Pierre Desrochers & Andrew Morriss of the CATO Institute. Very interesting book but reads like a testbook. & is heavily quoted for source.

Carson was an employee of US Fish & Wildlife as an editor. She chose to align herself with a researcher who was opposed to insecticides. Interestingly, she died at a young age of cancer though never exposed to the insecticides she condemned.

I will enclose one quote from the book:

Of course, we now know that the world is much more complex & nuanced than the "good vs bad" chemical world-view found in Silent Spring & widely accepted from the late 50's until the mid-1970's. First, Carson's vision of an idyllic pastoral past where humans were in perfect harmony with their natural environment is largely a myth. For example, Carson claimed that "under primitive agricultural conditions the farmer had few insect problems", when in fact the lives & harvests of early farming societies were filled with pestilence, disease & scarcity. The New Yorker ran a cartoon by Alex Gregory of 2 cavemen sitting, talking pensively, with one stating "something's just not right-our air is clean, our water is pure, we all get plenty of exercise, everything we eat is organic & free range, & yet nobody lives past 30"

After reading the book

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is often credited with creating a new precautionary approach for managing environmental risks. Yet this approach is premised on a simplistic risk paradigm

I am amused with the similarity to the Climate Change garbage we are inflicted with. Lots of Garbage = pseudoScience.

[Dan Storts]

Silent Snow, by Marla Cone, is basically a carbon copy of Silent Spring. However she uses all manufacturing outputs and also climate change in trying to prove the poisoning of actic ice/snow. She also gets her hands onto anything which may further her cause in toxic related materials being the Editor of Chief Enviromental Health News. She has even been able to get her fingers onto the topic of the materials used in the bumpers, we throw for our dogs, and published it in one of her articles.

As for Rachel Carson with her success in getting DDT banned from production. This was environmentalist dream because in effect this has been one of the best population control systems ever put in place. Malaria was once thoughout the United States and DDT was the main factor in it's elimination. If you are in your 50's or 60's, and were raised in a city, likely there were trucks/airplanes which sprayed DDT, in the late afternoon, while you were playing as a kid.

[Franco]

[QUOTE=Dan Storts;1059663]Silent Snow, by Marla Cone, is basically a carbon copy of Silent Spring. However she uses all manufacturing outputs and also climate change in trying to prove the poisoning of actic ice/snow. She also gets her hands onto anything which may further her cause in toxic related materials being the Editor of Chief Enviromental Health News. She has even been able to get her fingers onto the topic of the materials used in the bumpers, we throw for our dogs, and published it in one of her articles.

As for Rachel Carson with her success in getting DDT banned from production. This was environmentalist dream because in effect this has been one of the best population control systems ever put in place. Malaria was once thoughout the United States and DDT was the main factor in it's elimination. If you are in your 50's or 60's, and were raised in a city, likely there were trucks/airplanes which sprayed DDT, in the late afternoon, while you were playing as a kid.[/QUOTE]

And, that DDT is still in your cells. Caused a lot of human birth defects/abnormalities if I remember correctly. Animals too. DDT is still found in many humans and animals. It did force companies like Monsanto to develope safer perticides.

[Dan Storts]

The mercury in light bulbs is fine because it is for the good of the common man. Mad Hatter regards.

[huntinman]

It's banning has also caused untold deaths around the world from Malaria. For every action there is a reaction.

[Marvin S]

And, that DDT is still in your cells. Caused a lot of human birth defects/abnormalities if I remember correctly. Animals too. DDT is still found in many humans and animals. It did force companies like Monsanto to develope safer perticides.

No, it was not contested by the chemical companies as DDT was a low margin product. The regulation allowed them to sell higher margin pesticides that were less effective.

Franco, the scientific way is to quote a reliable scientific study to back up the blather.

But as presented by Dan S nonuse did adhere to the idea of a smaller population which was also quoted in the book.

[HPL]

The DDT ban was a major contributor to at least two Endangered Species Act success stories: Those of you who like seeing bald eagles or peregrine falcons can pretty much thank that ban for the recovery of those populations (those birds are top predators leading to a concentration of DDT in them, and high concentrations of DDT caused thinning of egg shells which then broke under the weight of the parents brooding the eggs).

They do still use DDT in other parts of the world where Malaria is a major problem (although malaria is a pretty good population growth suppressor).

[JDogger]

As a teenager growing up in West Africa in the early sixties we were supplied with malarial suppressives by the US Gov. My friends and I realized though, that there was a thriving black-market. I sold/traded my suppressives for every 13 year-old boys dream. Unrestricted firecrackers. What a blast. Until the morning I woke with shivers and chills in a 98 degree environment. It was not fun.
I believe the ddt ban was just.
I'm waiting for the round-up proliferation to bite us next. Thank foresight, for the establishment of seed banks.
Soylent Green Regards, JD

[Dan Storts]

The DDT ban was a major contributor to at least two Endangered Species Act success stories: Those of you who like seeing bald eagles or peregrine falcons can pretty much thank that ban for the recovery of those populations (those birds are top predators leading to a concentration of DDT in them, and high concentrations of DDT caused thinning of egg shells which then broke under the weight of the parents brooding the eggs).

They do still use DDT in other parts of the world where Malaria is a major problem (although malaria is a pretty good population growth suppressor).

The charge is that DDT thinned the shells of eggs. When nesting parent birds sat on the eggs, the shells cracked and no babies hatched. Carson charged that DDT was bringing bald eagles and robins to the “verge of extinction” — while noted ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson was reporting that the robin was the most abundant bird in North America.
Bald eagles between 1941 and 1960 migrating over Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania, doubled during the first six years of DDT-use. Their numbers increased from 9,291 in 1946 — before much DDT was used — to 16,163 in 1963 and 19,765 in 1968.
Professor Edwards reviews how bald eagles died of non-DDT causes. In Alaska, 128,000 were shot for bounty payments between 1917 and 1956. Between 1960 and 1965, 76 bald eagles found dead were autopsied: 46 had been shot or trapped; 7 had died of impact injuries from flying into buildings or towers. Between 1965 and 1980, shootings, trappings, electrocutions, and impact injuries chiefly accounted for their deaths.
Although some birds declined before DDT, they became much more abundant during the years of greatest DDT-use. But facts have not impeded the endless repetition of Carson’s bird myth.
Scientists tested the popular shell-thinning hypothesis. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists fed birds for 112 days on a diet with 100 times as much DDT as they were getting from the environment. No thinning of egg shells was found. The DDT had no effect on the birds.
One experimenter, to demonstrate eggshell-thinning, fed quail a diet with DDT but containing only one-fifth of the normal amount of calcium. His experiment succeeded in producing thinner eggshells, but his deception was exposed.

Compliments of Gerald & Natalie Sirkin