The Long-Term Effects of Pesticides

Would you want to know if the pesticides that were being sprayed on and around your homes would, in later years, cause cancer? That was Rachael Carsonis’s intended purpose: to make the general public aware of the harmful pesticides used in and around their neighborhoods. Carson stated that chemical treatment of soils led to the destruction of beneficial biological species and that such destruction resulted in an imbalance in the ecosystem. In human safety, Carson pointed out the exposure to or ingestion of various products, each at individually safe levels, taken together, could lead to health problems (mental and cancer).

Despite attempts by the chemical industry to dismiss Carson’s science, her work is credited with beginning the American environmental movement, the creation of the Environment Protection Agency, and the 1972 ban on DDT.

I don’t believe that Rachael Carson had any weaknesses in her line of argument. She stated things that were clinically proven through extensive research that she concluded while working for seventeen years at the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

The only problem with her argument is that she was just ahead of her time with all the information she was uncovering about the chemicals that were being used. People did t think about their health, they just thought about how the pesticides were going to help them. All the people wanted to hear was the positive aspects of agricultural chemicals.

Her language was put in simple terms and was straight to the point with her statements and facts.

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She did this to allow the general public to be able to absorb the information she provided for their benefit. I also believe she put her information in simple text so that she would not come off as a know scientist trying to become famous for her research. Instead, she wanted people to feel as if she was simply putting out the information for the people’s benefit. We are subjecting whole populations to exposure to chemicals that animal experiments have proved to be extremely poisonous and in many cases cumulative in their effects. These exposures now begin at or before birth and unless we change our methods- will continue through the lifetime of those now living. These important words of the renowned Racheal Carson will be heard ringing in our ears forever.