10-9-12: Remembering Silent Spring

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

B-seg-Carson-10-09.mp3

It’s been 50 years since Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring launched the modern environmental movement. She wrote her alarum about pesticides from her home in Silver Spring, after she had retired from her career as a writer and editor at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and she was fighting breast cancer that would take her life just a year-and-a-half after Silent Spring was published.

Some of the book used research on DDT that had been conducted at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center near Laurel. In the building where Rachel Carson used to pore over research findings, we sat with three research scientists Chan Robbins, Gary Heinz, and Matt Perry, to talk about how Patuxent shaped Silent Spring. Between them, they have over 140 years of experience working at Patuxent.

If you want to see the Patuxent Refuge, this Saturday is a good time to do it. The Patuxent Wildlife Festival will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

For more on Rachel Carson, you can check out William Souder's new biography of Rachel Carson, On a Farther Shore.

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

Web Extra: Sheilah talks with Chan and Gary about how Carson's editorial work at Patuxent influenced Silent Spring

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

Web Extra: Matt Perry on how the media covers environmental science

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

Web Extra: Matt Perry on the legacy of Silent Spring