order to regulate the use of these chemicals.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is usually considered the progenitor, or the first instance of, the environmental movement. Prior to the publication of this work, there were some famous individuals who advocated for environmental conservatism (most notably former president Theodore Roosevelt) but this particular book acted as a wake-up call for American society. It had previously given very little thought to its impact on the natural world.

Carson laid out the problem with pesticides, especially DDT, and then transitioned to show how simple types of human behaviors could have negative effects on the ecosystem. At the time, not many Americans may have realized how their lifestyle affected wildlife or the natural world. Her work was the first "green" book to be a bestseller.

Following this, a number of major changes galvanized American society. The first Earth Day was put into law by former president Richard Nixon. The Environmental Protection Agency was founded in 1970 as a way of conserving resources and managing the ecosystem. Recycling became mainstream at about the same time.

Today, many environmental concerns, like deforestation and global warming, are taught in schools so that children understand how their life affects the natural world. Many major milestones have been reached as a result of Carson's groundbreaking work, although we still contribute to many negative effects on our environment.

While Rachel Carson spends much of Silent Spring explaining the effects of chemicals on the environment, she also details the causes leading to those effects. She especially reveals the harm that nonorganic chemicals used as pesticides wreak on species, particularly certain types of birds—notably America’s national bird, the bald eagle. More specifically, she explains the processes by which eggs are damaged and the accumulated effects of insecticides over time and far along the food chain.

A specific effect of DDT, a chemical commonly used as an insecticide before its 1972 ban in the U.S., was to weaken, and ultimately destroy, the eggs of some birds Carson explains the processes of calcium absorption necessary to proper shell formation. She then details how DDT blocks the absorption so that shells lack the building blocks to form properly. Because the thin shells cannot survive the nesting process, too many babies die and the population declines.

Carson also uses the concept of biomagnification. Even when the animals did not themselves ingest the chemicals, they would be harmed later because they ate plants or other animals that had ingested them. Through biomagnification, the quantity of a given substance in an animal much lower on the food chain is greatly concentrated and continues present in higher levels than in animals higher on the food chain. Thus, the targeting of “harmful” insects (e.g., mosquitoes) through application of pesticides causes a ripple effect by damaging every species that would eat not only those insects but also beneficial ones.

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was a landmark book in this history of popular science, written for a lay audience not just as a way to present scientific fact but as a call to action to ban the use of DDT. The book was successful in its goal, and transformed our understanding of how humans can destroy the natural environment. The book is also important in another way, in that it was a pioneering example of interdisciplinary research, synthesizing biology, medicine, epidemiology, and the nascent science of ecology to look at humans and the natural world as a complex and interconnected system. 

Carson in Silent Spring melds stunningly poetic metaphors, such as the eerie quiet of the hypothetical town in which there is no dawn chorus of birds, with meticulous empirical details concerning the extent of pesticide spraying. She analyzes cellular biology to show how it is disrupted by DDT, a form of biological process, to statistical analysis of bird populations. 

Carson's work serves as one of the landmarks of ecology and ecological awareness.  I would say that this becomes one of the most profound scientific concepts that is evident in Carson's work.  Carson presents the case for ecological awareness in a manner that stresses the "biotic" nature of consciousness.  I think that this becomes one of the most pressing scientific concerns in the book.  It was radical for its time, and is something that we now take for granted.  Scientific interconnectedness in understanding the role of organisms on the planet is something that Carson stresses and does so in a very intricate manner.  Her descriptions and how the use of pesticides go against this process is rooted in scientific analysis and inquiry.  I think that this is a highly scientific concept.  In the process, Carson brings out one of the first works that deals with environmentalism and ecological awareness in the midst of a heavily consumerist social order that failed to understand the implications of a human centered approach to the environment.  In doing so, Carson's work becomes a scientific treatise or landmark statement about the practice of ecology.

In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson wrote about an issue that affected nearly everyone: pesticides and the harm they cause. This is one of the reasons her book received so much attention. Let's brainstorm a few more to get you started on this assignment.

You will want to comment on the fact that the book exposed a critical issue that directly affected people's homes and lives. People wanted to know what was really going on, so they bought and read the book. Before Silent Spring, pesticides seemed normal to people—even seen as a good thing. But then came an author claiming that they caused significant environment harm. This was certainly enough to spark interest, especially from people who may have been noticing changes in the world around them and wondering about the reasons.

Further, you can discuss the amount of research that went into the book and the shocking discoveries the author made. This presentation intrigued the public even more, for the book is well-written and, therefore, asserts a certain level of credibility. In fact, the book's claims sparked the environmental movement, and you might even write about how the book served as a focal point for people who wanted to work for change but needed some encouragement and instruction about how to proceed.

Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" was one of the first books to explore the impact mankind was having on nature. It helped initiate the enviornmental movement. Her hypothesis or theoretical framework, meticulously researched in her book, was that then widely used pesticide DDT was leading to the death of many bird species. She claimed its presence softened the shells birds laid. As a result, many baby birds were dying because their shells could not protect them until they were strong enough to live outside them. Her work eventually lead to the banning of DDT from pesticides. Since then, many other laws have been passed regulating the use of pesticides.