was born on May 27, 1907, in Springdale, Pennsylvania, a small town fifteen miles north of Pittsburgh. As a young girl, she enjoyed both nature and writing, experiencing the Pennsylvania landscape at a time when peregrine falcons were not endangered. The peregrine falcon began experiencing alarming declines in their numbers nationwide when Carson was an adult.
Carson worked for the government as a scientist and writer. She wrote in her personal time, producing books focused on the vitality and natural diversity of nature. Her early books included Under the Sea Wind, The Sea around Us, The Edge of the Sea, and Help Your Child to Wonder. Carson was interested in the role of poisons in the environment. With the increased, wide spread use of DDT in the late 1950's, she became more proactive in securing data on its effects and supporting documentation from biologists, chemists and geneticists.
In 1958, Olga Owens Hucking, the owner of a private bird sanctuary in Duxbury, Massachusetts sent a letter to Carson. Ms. Hucking was alarmed at the dead and dying birds at her sanctuary. That letter may have been the deciding factor prompting Carson's next book. It was clear to Carson that the issue of pesticides had to be addressed in a book with a tone different than her earlier writings. Her book, Silent Spring, was published in 1962. In it, Carson addressed the dangers posed by DDT and the dangers of a society blinded by technological progress.
The evidence was undisputedly conclusive that DDT interfered with calcium metabolism in birds at the top of the food chain. With no mechanism to excrete or breakdown DDT, birds at the top of the food chain accumulated DDT as they ate smaller birds, which, in turn, ate insects exposed to DDT. The interference with calcium metabolism caused thinning eggshells that broke easily.
The reviews of Silent Spring included the United States Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, "The most important chronicle of this century for the human race" and Loren Eisely of the University of Pennsylvania, "Devastatingly, heavily documented, relentless attack upon human carelessness, greed and irresponsibility." President Kennedy's Science Advisory Committee issued a report on May 15, 1963, confirming every point emphasized in Silent Spring.
Over the next two years, Rachel Carson carried on despite poor health. She responded to attacks by testifying at congressional hearings, appearing on television news shows and conferring with President Kennedy and his Science Advisory Committee. On April 14, 1964, Rachel Carson died of breast cancer at age fifty-six. It is an unhappy irony that she should die from a disease that has been linked by some to technological products and by-products in the environment.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom was posthumously awarded to Rachel Carson in 1980. The following words accompanied this highest decoration in the nation:
Never silent herself in the face of destructive trends, Rachel Carson fed a spring of awareness across America and beyond. She welcomed her audiences to her love of the sea, while with an equally clear voice she warned Americans of the danger human beings themselves pose for their own environment. Always concerned, always eloquent, she created a tide of environmental consciousness that has not ebbed.
Peregrine falcons, bald eagles and ospreys, once in danger of becoming extirpated in Pennsylvania, are making an impressive comeback thanks to the environmental ethic and foreword thinking of people like Rachel Carson. It is a happy irony, indeed, that these peregrine falcons chose to reside on the Rachel Carson State Office Building in Harrisburg, which was named in her honor.
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