Background
By tradition and by Carson's own public statements, the impetus for Silent Spring was a letter written in January 1958 by Carson's friend, Olga Owens Huckins, to The Boston Herald, describing the death of numerous birds around her property resulting from the aerial spraying of DDT to kill mosquitoes, a copy of which Huckins sent to Carson. Carson has stated that the letter prompted her to turn her attention to environmental problems caused by chemical pesticides.
In fact, Carson had become concerned about the effect of pesticides, DDT particularly, as early as the 1940s, when anti-pest campaigns had been part of the Pacific war effort. She had already begun collecting research on the matter and calling others' attention to it when a 1957 lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding aerial spraying over Long Island caught her attention and mobilized her to embark on the project that would eventually become Silent Spring.
Frank Edwin Egler was a contributor to the book.
Read more about this topic: Silent Spring
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