If Rachel Carson Were Writing Today: Silent Spring in Retrospect

Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., and Shirley Briggs

Editors' Summary: Twenty-five years ago this month, the New Yorker magazine published excerpts from a landmark book that would be published later that year — Silent Spring. Rachel Carson's eloquent yet chilling chronicle of the hazards of synthetic pesticides quickly became the starting point for any analysis of the subject and was one of the major forces behind the development of the environmental movement. Justice William O. Douglas called it "the most important chronicle of this century for the human race." In this Dialogue, the authors speculate what Rachel Carson would think if she were alive on the 25th anniversary of Silent Spring.

Dr. Epstein is President of the Rachel Carson Council and Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago. Shirley Briggs is Executive Director of the Rachel Carson Council. The Council was formed in 1965 to advance Miss Carson's philosophy by promoting public awareness of environmental issues and serving as a worldwide clearinghouse of information on toxic contaminants, with a focus on pesticides, for scientists and laymen.

[17 ELR 10180]

The contamination of our world is not alone a matter of mass spraying, indeed, for most of us this is of no less importance than the innumerable small-scale exposures to which we are subjected day by day, year after year. Like the constant dripping of water that in turn wears away the hardest stone, this birth-to-death contact with dangerous chemicals may in the end prove disastrous…. Probably no person is immune to contact with this spreading contamination unless he lives in the most isolated situation imaginable. Lulled by the soft sell and the hidden persuader, the average citizen is seldom aware of the deadly materials with which he is surrounding himself; indeed he may not realize he is using them at all. — Rachel Carson, from Silent Spring¹

What would Rachel Carson think if she were alive today on the 25th anniversary of Silent Spring? It would be presumptuous to say, but it might also be instructive to speculate.

The objects of her landmark book were to draw attention to the global dissemination of new synthetic chemicals and to express concerns as to their potential adverse effects. Like Darwin and other pathfinders, Rachel Carson had to gather a vast amount of information and synthesize it into a coherent concept of the natural world, using popular imagery and language. She is properly credited with making ecology a household word, explaining the intricate complexities of our natural world, and warning of its fragile susceptibility to mindless human intervention. This helped produce the broad public understanding that sustained the environmental movement.

Rachel Carson would have seen her premonitions more than vindicated if she were alive today. In general, such vindication is reflected by the overdue realization that the chemical industry is a runaway technology. More specific vindication is reflected by the exponential increase in production and use of synthetic organic chemicals since the dawn of the petrochemical era; increasing cancer rates and other evidence of exposure to toxic and carcinogen petrochemicals; the irresponsibility and intransigence of the chemical industry to regulation; the unresponsiveness of government; and the indifference or tacit acquiescence of the scientific community to the new era of microchemical pollutants. The developments that Rachel Carson would so gladly have welcomed have been the evolution of the public interest movement and the growth of grass roots activism.

Runaway Chemical Technology

With the dawn of the petrochemical era in the early 1940s, annual U.S. production of synthetic organic chemicals was about one billion pounds.² By the 1950s, annual production reached 30 billion pounds and by the 1980s over 400 billion pounds. The overwhelming majority of these industrial chemicals has never been adequately, if at all, tested for long-term toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic effects, let alone for ecological effects. United States production of synthetic pesticides has also increased dramatically. Rachel Carson reported that pesticide production rose from 124 million pounds in 1947 to 638 million pounds in 1960. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that 1.4 billion pounds were produced in 1985.

Petrochemicals are now ubiquitous and embrace a very wide range of products including drugs, pesticides, and [17 ELR 10181] solvents. Gradually, a pervasive mindset has developed in the public that the use of highly toxic materials is somehow required for our current lifestyle. The game seems more to see what can be made from these inherently toxic materials than to envision the final product first, and then to see how it might be made with chemicals of lesser toxicity. Virtually all aspects of our life have now become dominated by petrochemical products of one kind or another. The petrochemical products have replaced products that were previously manufactured from natural materials such as wood, glass, and fiber. The natural products were gradually priced out of the market on the basis of purchase price. The market price of the petrochemical products, however, does not include externalized costs, which are discounted and not reflected in the annual budget of any industry but are passed on to society. When externalized costs such as increasing cancer rates and contaminated groundwater are factored in, then synthetics are no longer cheaper than natural products.³

The petrochemical industry has by now surpassed its previous track record in levels of production and use of synthetic organic chemicals and in their global dissemination in air, water, food, and the workplace. The explosive growth of modern chemical technology has clearly outpaced social control mechanisms. Apart from pervasive changes in lifestyle and diet, these poorly controlled technologies have induced profound and poorly reversible environmental degradation and have resulted in progressive contamination of air, water, food, and the workplace with toxic and carcinogenic chemicals. The public health and ecological impacts of such contamination that Rachel Carson anticipated have become a reality.

The petrochemical industry has pursued short-term economic goals, unmindful of harm to workers, communities, or the environment. Except for drugs, food additives, and pesticides, there were no legal requirements for testing industrial chemicals until the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act,⁴ which has still been honored more in the breach than in the observance. Even in complying with requirements for toxicity testing, the extent of fraudulent and misleading data generation by in-house scientists and client laboratories has shown that much industry considers public safety of small concern. The record justifies the presumption that industry data, in general, must be treated as suspect until proven otherwise.⁵

Consequences of Runaway Technologies

A prime consequence is the hazardous waste crisis. From the disposal of under one million tons of hazardous wastes in 1940 to over 300 million tons annually in the 1980s, in excess of one ton per person per year, the industries involved — fossil fuel, metal mining and processing, nuclear, and petrochemical — have littered the entire land mass of the United States with some 50,000 toxic waste landfills, 20,000 of which are recognized as potentially hazardous; 170,000 industrial impoundments; 7,000 underground injection wells; not to mention some 2.5 million underground gasoline tanks, many of which are leaking. Not surprisingly, an increasing number of rural and urban communities have found themselves located on or near hazardous waste sites, or downstream, downgradient, or downwind. Particularly alarming is growing evidence of contamination of groundwater from such sites, contamination that poses grave and virtually irreversible hazards for centuries to come.⁶

Toxic waste dumps are tangible and more easily understood than the more gradual perils to which Silent Spring alerted us. Legislation and funding to clean up the thousands of toxic dumps has wide public support. Despite the large sums spent so far, however, EPA has made little headway. Technical problems may be great, but political obstacles also arise. The ideal solution, once the current crisis has been resolved, must come from the introduction of new processes and products that do not generate such wastes, and those that are unavoidable should be recycled wherever possible. Industry, however, shows little tendency to think this way. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced a process to make transparent plastic film from corn comparable to the toxic polyvinylchloride film that pervades our lives. This product would degrade into harmless elements after its useful life and would not imperil its makers or users. How much public pressure will it take to persuade industry to switch?

Journalists are increasingly aware of the issues at stake. A recent editorial in the Washington Post compares the enormous amount of money and attention given to the Superfund Bill to that provided for EPA's other responsibilities.⁷ The editorial noted that a recent EPA study concluded that priorities are skewed and that other issues, including pesticide pollution, cause far greater risks overall. The Post concluded that "[w]hen Congress passed a Superfund bill last year, it killed a pesticide bill. You'd never know it from the press releases, but the less elaborate bill that was killed may have been the more important."

Environmental contamination with highly potent carcinogenic pesticides has reached alarming and pervasive proportions. Contamination of ground- and surface waters has become commonplace. Much comes from agricultural use, but increasingly we find that the most intensely contaminated areas are residential. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that home lawns could average 10 pounds of pesticide application per acre, while farm use rarely exceeded 2.⁸ These pesticides drain into soil and water and volatilize far from the point of application, and meanwhile affect most of us in the place where we are most vulnerable. Failure of EPA to recognize these hazards is exemplified in their handling of termiticides. Though they phased out agricultural uses of chlordance/heptachlor in 1978, they have persisted in the myth that these pesticides applied underground around house foundations stay in place, and EPA continues to allow such uses. In fact, the contaminants generally penetrate into the house, exposing both people and their possessions. We know of no effective way to decontaminate houses or furnishings, or people. While tens of millions of houses have been treated and probably millions contaminated, pressures from mortgage [17 ELR 10182] lenders and commercial exterminators result in the continued use of these termiticides. New evidence from studies in Missouri confirms the movement of chlordane/heptachlor from urban areas through drainage into nearby rivers and the fish that live therein. There are other ways to deal with termites, including safer alternative controls and preventing infestation by sound building codes.⁹

In December 1986, EPA issued a grossly inadequate standard allowing continued use of termiticides, based on the erroneous and undocumented assumption that contamination only follows misapplication. EPA also called for more toxicity data, before they could ban these carcinogenic pesticides. This is some 40 years after these products were first registered, and 14 years after EPA had ruled that the agricultural uses of these pesticides posed imminent hazards from cancer and other long-term effects.

The many cases of chlordane poisoning that have accumulated in our files at Rachel Carson Council over the years would have been most disheartening to Rachel Carson, since they repeat over and over the same sort of case histories that she had gathered. Despite her clear exposition of the hazards, we have continued in the same mindless pattern until a substantial proportion of American homes are likely to have been contaminated.

Increasing Cancer Rates

Cancer is now the only major killing disease in the industrialized world whose rates are sharply rising. In contrast, there have been major reductions in deaths from cardiovascular disease, still the number one killer, largely because of a decline in smoking and attention to diet and exercise.

With over 450,000 United States deaths last year, cancer has reached an incidence of one in three and a mortality of one in four. Analysis of overall cancer rates, standardized for age, sex, and ethnicity, has demonstrated steady increases since the 1930s, with more recent sharp annual increases in incidence rates by some 2 percent and in mortality rates by some 1 percent.¹⁰ In 1962, the age adjusted cancer mortality rate in the United States was 170per 100,000. In 1982, it was 185 per 100,000. Striking confirmation of these recent increases comes from estimates of the lifetime probability of getting cancer for people born at different times. For white males born in 1975 or 1985, for instance, the probability of developing cancer has risen from 30 to 36 percent, and from 19 to 23 percent for dying from cancer.¹¹ Rates are increasing for cancers of the lung, breast, and colon, as well as for skin cancer, melanoma, and lymphatic/hematopoietic malignancies. Lung cancer is responsible for about one-third of the overall recent increase in incidence rates. It should be stressed that some 75 percent of all cancer deaths occur in people over 55 years, and that recent increases are largely restricted to these ages.

Much cancer today reflects events and exposures in the 1950s and 60s. Production, use, and disposal of synthetic, organic, and other industrial carcinogens were then minuscule compared to current levels, which will determine future cancer rates for younger populations now exposed. There is every reason to anticipate that the high current cancer rates will be dwarfed in coming decades.

Occupational exposure to industrial carcinogens has clearly emerged as a major risk factor for cancer. In 1978, a blue ribbon governmental commission estimated that up to 38 percent of all cancers in coming decades would reflect past and continuing exposures to just six high volume occupational carcinogens.¹² The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health estimates that some million workers are now exposed to 11 high volume carcinogens. Five- to 10-fold increases in cancer rates have been demonstrated in some occupations.

While most concern has understandably focused on increasing cancer rates, these are only a small part of the public health effects of environmental pollutants. Only a small proportion of the tens of thousands of petrochemicals in commerce, well under 500, are carcinogenic. Many of these, together with other noncarcinogenic petrochemicals, can induce other long-term toxic effects, including neurological, respiratory, reproductive, and probably immunological disease.

Failure to Regulate Pesticides

The EPA, established in 1970 to regulate pesticides and other toxic contaminants, operates under laws that authorize broad and effective regulation. The agency, however, has been hobbled by a variety of stalling strategies by the chemical industry, through lawsuits and political pressure, and by the Reagan Administration's drastic reduction in already inadequate agency funds. Even under these limitations, far more could have been done, had not inept or hostile officials often caused stalemates. The wisdom of setting up an agency to conduct research to establish a scientific base, tojudge the data gathered, to enact regulations on this basis, and then to serve as judge in ensuing disputes, must be questioned.

All pesticides already registered for use, as well as all new ones being registered, were to be tested for the whole range of their adverse effects under the 1972 amendments to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.¹³ After 15 years, few have been completely tested, leaving indefensible gaps in the data base EPA considers adequate. The required tests still leave many questions. Tests to identify which products cause birth defects are not required unless the expected use pattern will expose a large number of human females in what EPA considers their usual locations. This rules out concern for human or other females found in thinly settled areas, places that Miss Carson especially cherished. Should an accident contaminate a thickly settled place with a pesticide not normally used there, no one has a clue to its possible teratogenic effects. Other statistical dodges result in unrealistic rules. Mythical figures such as the person with Average Daily Intake of a contaminated food, on a national basis, define how much residue is allowed.

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Rachel Carson might be especially disappointed in the changing emphasis at EPA over the years. Silent Spring relied upon the major early studies of pesticide effects done by scientists in the Fish and Wildlife Service and the wildlife management profession. As the new cheap synthetics appeared, for the first time it was possible to cover vast areas of wildlife habitat with toxic sprays, so those concerned with fish, birds, and mammals first saw the unexpected damage. Their studies led in time to work on the human health effects, and this has now become the overriding concern of EPA. We often wonder how it can still properly be called an Environmental Protection Agency. As with the stress on human female exposure only for teratogens, we find continual curtailment of required tests. Hazards to wild animals are supposed to be detected by tests for domestic stock, though the kinds of creatures and their exposures vary widely. If a pesticide intended to kill insects or fungi happens also to kill plants, this may be discovered only by accident, not by prewarning tests. EPA was established with the understanding that we are all basically dependent on the health of our whole environment, as Rachel Carson demonstrated. The point needs to be made again.

Laws enacted since Silent Spring began well. The National Environmental Policy Act¹⁴ accomplished much in public policy until its agency, the Council on Environmental Quality, was nearly wiped out by the present Administration.¹⁵ EPA's authority has been far ahead of its performance. A change in federal attitude could reactivate sound programs, but presidents play a powerful role in setting national priorities. President Reagan, however, is unique in having run for office on an ideological anti-regulatory platform and systematically carrying it out often against the spirit and letter of the law. Senior regulatory positions have often been filled with staff hostile to agency mandates, and budget cutting has further hampered effective action. Costs to industry are considered, but not the costs to society from failure to regulate.¹⁶ In contrast, polls show consistent public concern with environmental and health issues, with the result that much of the constructive action in recent years has come from Congress as it reflects constituent pressure. Even sound laws must leave much to agency administration, however, and in this climate there has been much laxity in enforcement.

State governments, previously deferring to federal standards in toxic regulations, have begun to step into the breach. Massachusetts and New York have banned chlordane/heptachlor, and other states are considering doing so. Massachusetts banned daminozide (Alar) and amitrole and imposed stiff restrictions on ethylene dibromide in food. The rights of communities to know what toxins are kept and used in their areas have been established in some states, as well as the right of workers to know their workplace exposures. Counties and towns are trying, with varying success against intense industry pressure, to establish the right of all citizens to know their pesticide exposure from both community and private applications.

All this stems from the growing public concern and skill at taking action. The most encouraging development over the past quarter century is the widespread concern among the general public, their resolute search for reliable information, and their determination to protect themselves.¹⁷ Many disclaim the belief, apparently held by EPA, that every pest problem must have a toxic chemical solution. Alternative products and practices have many advocates, worldwide. Rachel Carson would be pleased to see that the global implications are now recognized by crucial agencies, public and private, and that United States citizens who act locally in environmental concerns are now also thinking globally. The United Nations Environment Programme established a world toxics register, our Agency for International Development programs of foreign assistance finally understand the problems of their pesticide programs, and citizen groups work increasingly in international association. The Pesticide Action Network reaches out to people of the less industrialized countries, so far almost helpless targets of irresponsible use of pesticides more strictly regulated in industrialized nations.¹⁸ We still export far too many of the products banned here to countries still uninformed of their hazards, and we get them back all too often in food imports. It is still very difficult for nongovernmental groups to learn the known facts about widely used chemicals, even under our Freedom of Information Act.¹⁹ Other countries lack such laws, and few can do research to provide needed data. Few can impose rules of disclosure on the international chemical companies, as we have been able to do. Our regulations are therefore copied widely, making our responsibility global.

The Growth of Environmental Activism

At the Rachel Carson Council, which exists at Miss Carson's wish that there be an independent source of information on these toxins, we have found as she did that even those people with little academic training have remarkable capacity to seek and comprehend complex technical material. Once seeing the problem, they learn all they can, try to persuade recalcitrant officials, and confront irresponsible industry. Private citizens are often hindered by lack of professional support, since not even the medical profession or other key academic disciplines have kept apace with the problems, and usually not with the public understanding. Readers of this journal are well aware of the progress in environmental law in the past 25 years. National conservation groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and Environmental Defense Fund have accomplished much in defining and applying the new laws. Public interest groups, along with Health Research Group, Consumer Federation of America, National Coalition [17 ELR 10184] Against Misuse of Pesticides, Environmental Action, National Campaign Against Toxic Hazards, Center for Science in the Public Interest, National Wildlife Federation, National Audubon Society, professional groups such as the American Public Health Association, and some labor unions are still contending against the better-funded industry groups.

Epilogue

Had Rachel Carson been here to follow the course of events, and continue her writing to explain and alert us, perhaps more real progress could have been made. She might have been even more effective in continuing the story of her final chapter — The Other Road. Here she explored many of the biologically sensible and effective alternatives that had been developed to make use of chemical biocides obsolete. Some headway has indeed been made in mechanical and biological means of pest control, but her clear voice could have led us more surely on "[t]he other fork in the road" that "offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth."

1. R. CARSON, SILENT SPRING (1962).

2. N. ASHFORD ET AL., CENTER FOR POLICY ALTERNATIVES MIT, BENEFITS OF ENVIRONMENTAL, HEALTH AND SAFETY REGULATION (Mar. 15, 1980) (report to U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs); L. DAVIS, THE CORPORATE ALCHEMISTS: PROFIT TAKERS AND PROBLEM MAKERS IN THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY (1984).

3. Epstein, Polluted Data, 18 THE SCIENCES 16 (1978).

4. 15 U.S.C. §§ 2601-2629, ELR STAT. 41335.

5. L. DAVIS, supra note 2.

6. S. EPSTEIN, L. BROWN & C. POPE, HAZARDOUS WASTE IN AMERICA (1982); V. PYE, R. PATRICK & J. QUARLES, GROUNDWATER CONTAMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES (1983); J. KING, TROUBLED WATER (1985).

7. Wash. Post, Feb. 24, 1987. See also McCarthy, Fools for Chemicals, Wash. Post, Apr. 11, 1987; McCarthy, The Silent Spring Still Flows With Danger, Wash. Post, Apr. 19, 1987.

8. NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, URBAN PEST MANAGEMENT (1980).

9. National Coalition Against Misuse of Pesticides' Petition for Emergency Suspension and Cancellation of Registrations for the Pesticides Chlordane/Heptachlor and Aldrin/Dieldrin (EPA filed Mar. 22, 1987).

10. S. EPSTEIN, THE POLITICS OF CANCER (rev. ed. 1979); Davis, Cancer Prevention: Assessing Cancer, Exposure and Recent Trends in Mortality for U.S. Males, 1968-1978, 2 TERATOGENESIS, CARCINOGENESIS AND MUTAGENESIS 105 (1982).

11. Seidman et al., Probabilities of Eventually Developing or Dying of Cancer: United States, 1985, 35 CA-A CANCER J. OF CLINICIANS 35 (1985).

12. NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SCIENCES, AND NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH, ESTIMATES OF THE FRACTION OF CANCER IN THE UNITED STATES RELATED TO OCCUPATIONAL FACTORS (Sept. 15, 1978).

13. 7 U.S.C. §§ 135-135k, ELR STAT. 42301.

14. 42 U.S.C. §§ 4321-4361, ELR STAT. 41009.

15. DEMOCRATIC STUDY GROUP, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, REAGAN'S TOXIC POLLUTION RECORD: A PUBLIC HEALTH HAZARD (special report July 31, 1984); FRIENDS OF THE EARTH, NATIONAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL, THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY, SIERRA CLUB, NATIONAL AUBUDON SOCIETY, ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND, ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY CENTER, ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION, DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE, AND SOLAR LOBBY, INDICTMENT: THE CASE AGAINST THE REAGAN ENVIRONMENTAL RECORD (Mar. 1982).

16. Baram, Cost-Benefit Analysis: An Inadequate Basis for Health, Safety and Environmental Regulatory Decision Making, 8 ECOLOGY L.Q. 473 (1980).

17. Freudenberg, Citizen Action for Environmental Health: Report on a Survey of Community Organizations, 74 AM. J. PUB. HEALTH 444 (1984).

18. THE EXPORT OF HAZARD: TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL ISSUES (J. Ives ed. 1985).

19. Ashford & Caldart, The Right to Know: Toxic Information Transfer in the Workplace, 6 ANN. REV. PUB. HEALTH 383 (1985); Cohen, Workplace Hazards: Do We Have a Right to Know?, 2 HOFSTRA ENVTL. L. DIG. 10 (Spring 1985).