Chapter 7-8 of Silent Spring (Summary)

Chapter seven of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson is about the effects that chemical pesticides have on animals. It discusses the specific animals effected besides the insects initially targeted and attempts to convince the citizens reading the book about the danger of the chemicals.

There was a discrepancy in the stories of two opposing sides regarding the effects of insecticides on animals like robins, pheasants, and domestic cats. The first group containing conservationists and biologists believed the losses of such animals to be extreme, even verging on catastrophic. The other group, control agencies, completely denied the idea that insecticides were killing animals that were not the target and that if insecticides were killing animals, the loss was not catastrophic and on a very small scale. The discrepancy resulted from the differences in credibility for the specialists of the two groups. The biologists were most qualified to determine loss of wildlife while the entomologists were so specialized in one area that they didn't study the effects the chemicals have on the life on earth.

There were many ways large-scale spray programs harmed the animals in the environment. Populations of birds shrank, and even when they were able to re-establish themselves in the environment another spraying occurred. In an area that is sprayed, all the plants and animals there are hurt but also any animals that migrate to that area are effected. This type of large-scale program was used in Michigan in 1959 to rid the area of the Japanese beetle. The Japanese beetle is one that was imported from Japan and later controlled very easily with biological controls. There were more than 34 known predators of the Japanese beetle. At the time of spraying it was not causing much trouble and there was some confusion over why it was targeted to begin with.

During the spraying program 27,000 acres were dusted with a chemical called Aldrin, which is one of the cheapest and most dangerous...