Rachel Carson was born on 27th May 1907. If she were still alive, she would be 100 years old today.
Many claim her as founding the modern environment movement. Her work also had a direct influence on government. The US Congress went on to pass the National Environmental Policy Act, establish the Environmental Protection Agency, and ban DDT based on her activism.
Before Rachel Carson became an activist she was a writer.
She was just 10 years old when her first story was published in a children’s literary magazine. She read widely including the English Romantics and was influenced by their belief in the concept of ‘the balance of nature’ and ‘pristine wilderness’.
A zoology professor urged her to major in biology rather than English at Pennsylvania College for Women, today known as Chatham College. She was later to say that science, in particular marine biology, also gave her “something to write about”.
She never married, or completed the PhD she began at John Hopkins University in marine biology. Her first job was as a junior aquatic biologist at the Bureau of Fisheries where she was soon moved into communications and within 10 years was editor in chief of all the agency’s publications.
In 1951, still at the Bureau, her second book the The Sea Around Us was published and she became an overnight literary celebrity when it was serialized by the New York Times.
Her fourth book, Silent Spring, published in 1962 was also serialized by the newspaper. It combined Rachel Carson’s passion for writing and nature, with her growing hatred of industrialization. The book was written to alert the American public to the environmental and human dangers of the indiscriminate use of pesticides and it also captured the imagination of then President John F. Kennedy.
The book became a best seller.
In the same way people like Al Gore and Tim Flannery are today warning of a climate crisis, as far back as 1945 the Reader’s Digest was publishing Rachel Carson warning of the dangers of pesticides, particularly DDT. She wrote that the pollution of the environment through ignorance and greed was the ultimate act of human arrogance. She turned the widespread use of DDT into a moral issue in the same way Al Gore has turned global warming into a moral issue, including for the US government.
Like Al Gore, Rachel Carson gave testimony before congress. She claimed that public opinion was being ignored and government must take responsibility for the damage from the widespread use of toxic chemicals. At that time the Senate Committee on Commerce was hearing testimony on the Chemical Pesticides Coordination Act which would require labels to tell how to avert damage to fish and wildlife.
She had no institutional affiliation and had no scientific publications in the area of chemical toxicology but she galvinized public and government support for more controls on the use of chemicals.
Rachel Carson died of breast cancer on 14 April 1964, aged just 56, and before much of her work had its real impact. In 1980, she was posthumously awarded the highest civilian honour in the USA, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The same year Time Magazine published a feature entitled ‘The Poisoning of America’ claiming that “Of all of man’s interventions in the natural order, none is accelerating quite so alarmingly as the creation of chemical compounds.”
Recently, with the approach of the centenary of Rachel Carson’s birth, US Senate Democrats planned a resolution to honour her legacy, but Republican Senator Tom Coburn, a practising Doctor and campaigner for the use of DDT in the fight against malaria in Africa, scuttled this.
The senator has said that Rachel Carson used junk science and that her “warnings about environmental damage have put a stigma on potentially lifesaving pesticides” like DDT.
In 1962, the same year that Silent Spring was published, Carlos Alvarado and L.J. Bruce-Chwatt* in Scientific American wrote of the hopeful outlook for the control of malaria, that during the last 15 years “modern methods” have cut the number of cases of malaria worldwide from 350 million to less than 100 million with complete eradication achieved in several areas including the USA. At that time the World Health Organization was aiming for the total eradication of the disease from the whole human population.
But Rachel Carson’s campaign cut across this effort. She advocated that mankind seek to live in harmony with ‘Mother Nature’ rather than to seek to conquer her.
Had Rachel Carson been less successful, had her books and her activism resulted in the introduction of more controls on agricultural chemicals, without the complete banning of DDT in the US, her ultimate legacy may have been a better one.
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* Malaria, by Alvarado and Bruce-Chwatt is in a special anthology of Scientific American articles entitled ‘The Insects’ selected and Introduced by Thomas Eisner and Edward Wilson published by W.H. Freeman and Company, 1977.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Jen for an entomologist and given the global history of insect resistance, and decades of work on integrated pest management, an amazingly partisan piece. You’ve just left out the entire agricultural history of pesticides, resistance and IPM. Go on – tell us that pesticide resistance is a lower order manageable issue.
Luke,
Rachel Carson has one chapter on resistance in ‘Silent Spring’. It’s an issue, but as I’ve written before,it’s manageable.
I thought my piece, as a summary of her legacy, suggested she did some good, but it was taken a bit far.
You don’t have to ban DDT to manage resistance or its potential negative impacts on the environment – but there was a need for more regulation – and Rachel Carson championed this.
If I were to add a paragraph on resistence, which would probably round it out more, how would it read? Give me some text?
As another “entomologist” (arachnologist technically…) I though Jenifer’s piece was pretty balanced.
Insect resistance means we end up with a moving target to control outbreaks, and while other control methods should- and often are- explored (biological control of many pests has had some success)- I’m not convinced that ‘banning’ pesticides is superior to say, better integration with other tools and more balanced use.
Chthonic regards- B
Here is what Carson wrote about insecticides and malaria. She makes a lot more sense than Jennifer.
“Although insect resistance is a matter of concern in agriculture and forestry, it is in the field of public health that the most serious apprehensions have been felt. The relation between various insects and many diseases of man is an ancient one Mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles may inject into the human bloodstream the single-celled organism of malaria. …
These are important problems and must be met. No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the story – the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting.
A distinguished Canadian entomologist, Dr A. W. A. Brown, was engaged by the World Health Organization to make a comprehensive survey of the resistance problem. In the resulting monograph, published in 1958, Dr Brown has this to say: Barely a decade after the introduction of the potent synthetic insecticides in public health programmes, the main technical problem is the development of resistance to them by the insects they formerly controlled. In publishing his monograph, the World Health Organization warned that the vigorous offensive now being pursued against arthropod-borne diseases such as malaria, typhus fever, and plague risks a serious setback unless this new problem can be rapidly mastered.
What is the measure of this setback? The list of resistant species now includes practically all of the insect groups of medical importance. … Malaria programmes are threatened by resistance among mosquitoes. …
Probably the first medical use of modem insecticides occurred in Italy in 1943 when the Allied Military Government launched a successful attack on typhus by dusting enormous numbers of people with DDT. This was followed two years later by extensive application of residual sprays for the control of malaria mosquitoes. Only a year later the first signs of trouble appeared. Both houseflies and mosquitoes of the genus Culex began to show resistance to the sprays. In 1948 a new chemical, chlordane, was tried as a supplement to DDT. This time good control was obtained for two years, but by August of 1950 chlordane-resistant flies appeared, and by the end of that year all of the houseflies as well as the Culex mosquitoes seemed to be resistant to chlordane. As rapidly as new chemicals were brought into use, resistance developed. …
The first malaria mosquito to develop resistance to DDT was Anopheles sacharovi in Greece. Extensive spraying was begun in 1946 with early success, by 1949, however, observers noticed that adult mosquitoes were resting in large numbers under road bridges, although they were absent from houses and stables that had been treated. Soon this habit of outside resting was extended to caves, outbuildings, and culverts and to the foliage and trunks of orange trees. Apparently the adult mosquitoes had become sufficiently tolerant of DDT to escape from sprayed buildings and rest and recover in the open. A few months later they were able to remain in houses, where they were found resting on treated walls.
This was a portent of the extremely serious situation that has now developed. Resistance to insecticides by mosquitoes of the anopheline group has surged upwards at an astounding rate, being created by the thoroughness of the very house-spraying programmes designed to eliminate malaria. In 1956, only 5 species of these mosquitoes displayed resistance; by early 1960 the number had risen from 5 to 28! The number includes very dangerous malaria vectors in West Africa, the Middle East, Central America, Indonesia, and the eastern European region. …
The consequences of resistance in terms of malaria and other diseases are indicated by reports from many parts of the world. An outbreak of yellow fever in Trinidad in 1954 followed failure to control the vector mosquito because of resistance. There has been a flare-up of malaria in Indonesia and Iran. …
Some malaria mosquitoes have a habit that so reduces their exposure to DDT as to make them virtually immune. Irritated by the spray, they leave the huts and survive outside. …
It is more sensible in some cases to take a small amount of damage in preference to having none for a time but paying for it in the long run by losing the very means of fighting [is the advice given in Holland by Dr Briejer in his capacity as director of the Plant Protection Service]. Practical advice should be ‘Spray as little as you possibly can’ rather than Spray to the limit of your capacity’…, Pressure on the pest population should always be as slight as possible.
Dr Briejer says:
“It is more than clear that we are travelling a dangerous road. We are going to have to do some very energetic research on other control measures, measures that will have to be biological, not chemical. Our aim should be to guide natural processes as cautiously as possible in the desired direction rather than to use brute force…
Tim Lambert,
So Rachel Carson, who died in 1964, recognised that resistance to insecticides was a potential problem. A lot of work has been done since the 1960s.
What do you think about IPM? This is a philosophy for the management of resistance which became popular in the 1980s – and is still practiced.
Why is it so difficult to admit that the de facto ban of DDT though well intentioned, probably caused unnecessary deaths?
Is this debate so puerile that history has to be re-written to sanctify/vilify ( depends where you sit ) one side or another?
I’ve read Silent Spring.
Carson was overwhelmingly critical of the use of DDT.
It doesn’t follow that she didn’t care about the consequences for human well being.
The lesson surely is that Governments should be as well-informed on the science as possible before making major decisions affecting human welfare.
And also that advocates, by definition , aren’t the best sources to rely on.
Jen – IPM has been widely discussed but seldom successful save recent successes such as in the reintroduction of GM cotton to the Ord River. Why – simply because most pesticides took out the beneficials as well as flaring secondary pests such as mites and aphids. Hundreds of species of insects have been resistant to DDT, cross resistance to modern pesticides such as synthetic pyrethroids are a major issue, DDT has definite effects on aquatic biota and at the time would have been a concern as a bioaccumulant in birds and mammals.
I’m trying to find a definitive recent review on the state of insect resistance. Should have noted these when I resd them.
But as good example from the pesticide era is Rick Roush in Ann Rev Ent 1987 “Resistance to one or more insecticides had been reported in at least 447 species of insects and mites by 1984. As a result of cross and multiple resisatnce many insect and mite pests are able to tolerate virtually all available pesticides available for their control.
The monetary and human costs of resistance are difficult to assess, but loss of pesticide effectiveness almost invariably entails increased application frequencies and dosages and finally, more expensive replacement compounds, as new pesticides become increasingly more difficult to discover, develop, register and manufacture. Therefore, it is essential to develop strategies to delay or minimise the probability of resistance evolution. ”
http://www.pan-uk.org/pestnews/actives/ddt.htm says
“Many insect species have developed resistance to DDT. The first cases of resistant flies were known to scientists as early as 1947, although this was not widely reported at the time(39). In the intervening years, resistance problems increased mostly because of over-use in agriculture. By 1984 a world survey showed that 233 species, mostly insects, were resistant to DDT(40). Today, with cross resistance to several insecticides, it is difficult to obtain accurate figures on the situation regarding the number of pest species resistant to DDT. ”
Luke, I’m not sure what point you are trying to make … at least not in the context of my post. Perhaps if you, and Tim, wrote a short summary in your own words?
… to be sure resistance is a problem that needs to be managed.
I was recently in Thailand, where Malaria has been a health issue. It’s largely disappeared, due to sensible management and education, without the need for any blanket spraying of DDT. The only areas where it is still a worry are border areas of Burma, where the Burmese regime is incapable of running a control program effectively.
Jen –
(1) a bioaccumulant with unknown consequences
(2) toxic in aquatic systems
(3) the egg shell issue istill has standing but more complex than first seen
(4) we have serious widespread insect resistance in many agricultural species and mosquitos from overuse.
(5) that resistance has conferred cross resistance
(6) environmentally better pesticides have been developed
(7) many other organochlorines have been withdrawn from use.
Seems quite a case and in retrospect a reasonable decision. The ban had exclusions including medical ones.
All these factors put Carson’s work into a wider context of issues of the time. I would have thought as seemingly an IPM or biocontrol advocating entomologist you would think the ecological principles still hold.
My quotations are a formal documentation of the resistance issues.
Coburn seems to be quite a character. I’m not sure of his expertise for much except unusual politics. Yet another good ol’ boy.
SJT, Great news for Thailand. I wonder what/if any chemical they use as part of the program. BTW I’d never support “the blanket spraying of DDT”.
Luke, Sounds like you understand the principles of IPM. The only thing we might disagree on is whether or not Rachel Carson’s work resulted in the effective banning of some great chemicals – including DDT – that had/have an important potential role in some control programs.
Rachel Carson was not the problem it was the uncritical acceptance of her work (fable) to define govt policy.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JQP/is_323/ai_30324362
“some great chemicals” mmmmm – can I have some chlordane with that and hold the dieldrin.
🙂
Jen – you have no made a case for the ban though – who did and who did not? When?
DDT in South America (ex CDC 1997) – figure 7 is compelling, data derived from PANNA
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol3no3/roberts.htm
A quote from “jim” and his sagacious post above:
The lesson surely is that Governments should be as well-informed on the science as possible before making major decisions affecting human welfare.
And also that advocates, by definition , aren’t the best sources to rely on.
Well said Jim – obvious really – and if only we could apply to AGW as well.
You were very kind to her Jen.
Personally a romantic murdering do gooder may have been more apt.
The dead remain dead.
No argument is sought this is an opinion and wont change.
The piece has be republished by OLO, click here: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5908
“Well said Jim – obvious really – and if only we could apply to AGW as well”.
Logic like that doesn’t cut it in here. Unless you’re screaming about environmentalists, that is.
Rog, Thanks for the link. Fig 1 is also compelling.
And most of us would have no problem with Rog’s data and the thrust of the argument for malaria control. Did Rachel Carson either ?
I found a report on the issue.
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/APCITY/UNPAN009706.pdf
The problem appears to be that it would be much easier to control if Burma and Cambodia had better functioning civil societies.
That data was 1997 Luke, what kept you so long?
You mean those data were from 1997. Obviously some countries were/are still using DDT so Rachel mustn’t have been powerful enough !
If resistance was such a big issue and, indeed, inevitable, then there was absolutely no justification for a ban.
My father’s banana plantation was the first in Australia to develop Dieldrin resistant Banana Weevil. Our use of Dieldrin stopped immediately.
We also had a perfectly sound house, but it was built on a slope with the uphill side close to the ground. It was built at the time when arsenic powder was readily available for termite traps and for treating house posts.
The banning of Arsenic and Dieldrin made it impossible to adequately protect the house from termite attack. And as our house was close to our forest, this termite attack was continuous.
The old house is now in an advanced state of decline and we can chalk up about 25 tonnes of CO2 emissions to the people who promoted the ban. I wonder how many more houses have, and will in future, be sacrificed to the brutish god of blunt instruments?
Ian do you think that responsible pest management is to keep using pesticides till you have super-resistant bugs sometimes selecting for cross resistance with other pesticides (current and future). Given a third of the world’s food supply is gobbled by insects, and that new pesticides are expensive to produce and not that that common is that a rational position?
Personally I would not have banned the OCs from termite use.
The problem with the organochlorine story is lack of discrimination. One size doesn’t fit all. Withdrawl of use from BROADSCALE agriculture is different to focussed small application (IMO of course).
So much interest in DDT in the developed world but not on tobacco. Wonder if there are any connections?
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/05/original-sin-tobacco-denialism-is.html
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/05/who-ordered-that-hundred-year-wingnuts.html
What a stench !
What a casuist argument Luke. The continued use of a particular pesticide after resistance is detected in part of a population does not produce “super resistance” as you claim. All it does is produce a steadily declining portion of the population that can be managed with that pesticide. Meanwhile, a steadily larger portion of the population is managed with the new pesticide until all of the population is managed with the new one.
Switching pesticides before their effective life cycle has been reached merely speeds up the progression through new pesticides and shortens the useful life of each.
And in respect of termite controls, one must ask how many million tonnes of CO2 is being released each year by the banning of our most effective termite control measures?
There was a need for proper guidelines on use of these chemicals but that need was met with a blunt instrument wielded by the indifferent.
Ian you haven’t got a clue about insect resistance. Get educated. Go study Heliothis resistance mechanisms. There’s more than one.
Jennifer: “The senator has said that Rachel Carson used junk science and that her “warnings about environmental damage have put a stigma on potentially lifesaving pesticides” like DDT”
Sure “modern methods” probably did give us a quick reduction in malaria cases by about two thirds back in the 60’s era but the long term effects of POPS etc in the wider environment were largely unknown by any profession during their heyday.
DDT was simply too easy
This reminds me of arguments regarding “racial hygiene” and other smarmy things.
Why should anyone care about insect resistance to DDT? Insect-lovers and human-haters would naturally applaud insect resistance to chemicals. Wouldn’t that be an ideal situation for them all?
That argument of “unknown consequences” is widespread and astoundingly ignorant. Nearly one hundred percent of all consequences of anything at all are unknown, and that’s simply because the consequences don’t exist in the real world.
It would be far more honest if they said “not even imaginary consequences” instead. These “consequences” are so “unknown” that these people don’t even bother to pretend to describe them.
They won’t try to describe these notional consequences because some scientist somewhere might actually test the theory and find it’s total shinola.
What we need is a workable theory that describes people with phobias they can’t rationally describe.
I propose that it at least be named: let’s call it “whatchamacallitophobia.”
Any time you want to actually substantiate your opinion on resistance, Luke, be my guest and provide it here. Until then we will have no choice but to assume your brain has the consistency of navel fluff soaked in lard.
Ian – examples of super resistance and cross resistance:
Resistance to phosphine in the lesser grain borer (Rhyzopertha dominica) has been known in Australia since the 1980s. The resistance then was fairly moderate, with resistant populations needing around 30 times the dose of phosphine required to control susceptible populations. A single major gene controlled this ‘weak’ resistance. Such resistance is now very common in lesser grain borer populations in eastern Australia.
In 1997, entomologists detected a new higher-level resistance, with resistant populations some 240 times that of susceptible strains. Molecular studies by Dr Ebert revealed that this new resistance was due to the appearance of a second resistance gene. By itself, this second gene provides only weak protection for the insect, but when it occurs together with the first gene in the same insect, their effects multiply producing a very strong resistance.
A reduction in the sensitivity of the insect’s voltage-gated sodium channels to the
binding of insecticides causes the resistance phenotype known as ‘‘kdr.’’ Changes
associated with pyrethroid/DDT resistance in the sodium channels of insects are
more variable than those seen in the GABA receptors but still appear to be limited
to a small number of regions on this large channel protein.
The para sodium channel of houseflies contains 2108 amino acids, which fold
into 4 hydrophobic repeat domains (I-IV) separated by hydrophilic linkers. The
first mutation to be characterized in kdr insects was a leucine to phenylalanine
point mutation in the S6 transmembrane segment of domain II in the sodium
channel sequence of M. domestica (116, 117) which produces 10- to 20-fold
resistance to DDT and pyrethroids. In ‘‘super-kdr’’ houseflies, this mutation also
occurs with a second methionine to threonine substitution further upstream in the
same domain, resulting in more than 500-fold resistance (117). Analysis of the
domain region of the para-sodium channel gene in pyrethroid-resistant An. gambiae
from the Ivory Coast showed an identical Leu to Phe mutation in this species
(71).
Strains of Sitophilus zeamais (Motsch.) exposed for a long time to DDT on grain developed resistance to DDT and the pyrethroids deltamethrin, cypermethrin and permethrin (Guedes et al. 1995). Also pyrethrin resistant strains of Sitophilus granarius (L.) showed resistance to DDT and other pyrethroids (Prickett 1980). This cross-resistance between DDT and pyrethroids was reported also in stored grain pests by Heather (Heather 1986), in which Sitophilus oryzae (L.) developed cross-resistance to pyrethroids after long term exposure to DDT.
And you wonder why I get cross with you Ian.
Ian said
>The continued use of a particular pesticide after resistance is detected in part of a population does not produce “super resistance” as you claim. All it does is produce a steadily declining portion of the population that can be managed with that pesticide. Meanwhile, a steadily larger portion of the population is managed with the new pesticide until all of the population is managed with the new one.
Switching pesticides before their effective life cycle has been reached merely speeds up the progression through new pesticides and shortens the useful life of each.
Ian also said
>Any time you want to actually substantiate your your opinion on resistance
And where are your refs Ian to support your claims? You are great at demanding others substantiate their claims, but when it comes to you doing the same for yours, you are less than forthcoming (or have to beg for help from others). Walk the wall Mottsa.
Travis – one normally only hits Ian for 6 not out of the stadium.
Oh, so now we are talking about cross-resistance, not just common garden variety resistance. And how widespread are these instances of cross resistance?
Or is this the standard ploy of using a few instances to extrapolate to the entire food chain?
Your examples have merely described the condition. They have not explained how the continued use of DDT on non-resistant populations has contributed to the cross resistance in already resistant populations. The cross resistance appears to be linked to the continued use of DDT on populations that already show some level of resistance. Duuuhh.
There’s that old comprehension deficit again, Luke, it’s a worry.
Travis, my substantiation is in the form of a personal account of a brace of DPI entomologists watching as my father dipped Banana Weevils in pure Dieldrin. It was followed up with our own set of experimental applications, both in-shed and in-field, to find an effective alternative. It is called life experience, you should try it some time.
>Travis, my substantiation is in the form of a personal account of a brace of DPI entomologists watching as my father dipped Banana Weevils in pure Dieldrin. It was followed up with our own set of experimental applications, both in-shed and in-field, to find an effective alternative. It is called life experience, you should try it some time.
Yeah that will cut it Ian. I’d love to read your reaction if someone like Luke or SJT came up with an answer like that. Somehow I don’t think it would be acceptable. But then your life experiences are far more important than anything we could experience. Cop out.
No no – BOTH super resistance and cross resistance. Resistance is more complicated than you have thought. No wiggling out of it Ian. You asked for the info and mate you got it.
It’s not only with DDT – which I why I sugegsted you do some reading.
As well as field evidence they have demonstrated in the laboratory that you can select for DDT resistance and found pyrethroid resistance also selected for. So DDT is a hazard to modern pesticide longevity.
Ian you may be delighted to know that scientists working IN COOPERATION with farmers have developed a state of the art pesticide management strategy in the cotton industry also utilising specific pesticides, trap/refugia crops, GM cotton and renewed interest in insect predators. The industry reps tend to not call those scientists spivs, scum and crooks. The knowledge of resistance genetics is paramount in deciding the pesticide frequency and rotation strategy.
Gosh Luke, “state of the art”, just like the mix of chemical and trapping methods (Paris Green) that we applied back in 1968?
You have managed to disappear up your own backside again, Luke. The issue we are debating is the merit or otherwise of a total ban on DDT. The need to combat resistance was never a justification for a total ban on DDT because, as you have mentioned yourself, the key to proper management is frequency and rotation.
Were you even born in 1968?
In 1968 pesticide use in much of the world’s agriculture was indiscriminate with resistant insects popping up every other day.
It’s more than frequency and location. Also other alternative chemicals, resistance monitoring, resistant crop varieties, GM technology, refugia trap crops, aerial application technology, cultural control and agronomy. AND the scale of geography involved.
So when you motivate an entire industry, including supporting chemical industry, to adopt area-wide integrated pest management including GM crops and refugia; as well as containing your contaminated tailwater totally on farm, minimising all drift, and using reusable bulk chemical transport instead of drums – well send in your CV.
We’ll then sit you down with one of those nasty head-hunter chappies and give you a ream-out interview. First question – what do you know about cross resistance and super-resistance.