Researched
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring' (1962) documents how pesticides such as DDT damage birds and ecosystems and starts the modern environmental movement.
Open in the interactive tree →The book led to public hearings, the US Environmental Protection Agency (1970) and the DDT ban in the US (1972). It made environmental science a topic of public policy.
Prerequisites
- Ecology and the ecosystem1935Carson's case rested on ecosystem thinking: poisons move up food chains
- Synthetic pesticides1939
Unlocks
- Green Chemistry1998Pesticide damage exposed by Carson was a founding lesson of green chemistry