What's Next After Silent Spring?

By Amanda Daley

Rachel Carson brought up many interesting facts in her book Silent Spring. The part that I found most interesting is how dangerous DDT is to not only the insects but to people. She reported many cases of people becoming diseased later on in life after they have had contact with DDT.

It makes me wonder why the federal government took so long to act against DDT with all these people becoming deathly ill. It’s not very comforting how long it takes the government to act on something. It’s almost as if the government doesn’t really exist and nothing would have happened if this book didn’t come out.

But even though DDT was extremely dangerous, I feel like what isn’t harmful to our health nowadays? Almost everything causes cancer or some other sort of disease, it seems. We can’t escape the many dangers there are in the world.

I don’t know what kind of pesticides are used today on crops, but I assume that they are not as dangerous as they were back in the 50s and 60s…atleast I hope that they are safer than they were.

I hope that in the future they can find another way to ward off insects from the crops without the use of chemicals. Any sort of chemical isn’t good for humans or animals. Hopefully, scientists of the future will be able to come up with a chemical-free and non-harmful way of keeping our crops safe from insects that can destroy our food supply.