Chapter 7 focuses on the affects of massive spraying campaigns. This section describes the massive spraying operations, their ineffectiveness in killing target insects, and the horrible record of the massive killing of non-targeted birds and animals. She refers to one memorable campaign against the Japanese beetle in the Midwest. This widespread spraying campaign ignored the fact that the eastern states had successfully controlled the beetle with biological control of natural enemies of the beetle, but still decided to hold a spraying campaign that had vastly destructive effects on birds and animals. There is very little funding for natural controls of insects, despite the historical success of this method and its healthier environmental effects. Carson’s main focus chapter 8 is on the fight against Dutch elm disease using DDT which killed thousands of birds but had little to no effect on the Dutch elm disease over time. In chapter 10 Carson describes a campaign against the gypsy moth which used massive spraying of insecticides from airplanes. Authorities allowed the spraying of cities, causing people to be sprayed as they went about their lives oblivious to the harmful chemicals that were raining down on them. Dairy farms and vegetable farms were wiped out, their produce rendered unfit for human consumption.
Chapter 12 introduces the affects of chemical poisons on the human body. It informs the reader of the make-up of the human body--its ecology, as Carson terms it, which is upset over a period of time by repeated poisonings. Through radiation and chemical poisoning, the natural process of cell oxidation is damaged and cells become cancerous. Scientists have also traced genetic mutations to this kind of poisonous damage on the human body, including wider spread cases of Down’s syndrome.
Chapter 15 is devoted to a careful description of insects and how quick they are to develop immunity to insecticides. Carson explains that nature already has insect controls in place and that scientists should work with these natural controls to deal with insect overpopulation. Only two per cent of entomologists are in this line of research, an inconsequential amount for the abundant need of alternate control methods. Because insecticides don’t just kill the target insect, but also its natural predator, when target insect develop a resistance and return, they have no natural predators to control their spread. This problem becomes most serious with disease-carrying insects such as mosquitoes that reproduce so rapidly that insecticide spraying is not an adequate method of control.
Carson concludes by offering descriptions of alternative methods of insect control. To control insects, we can introduce their natural enemies, introduce their natural diseases, and introduce parasites that will kill them, among other safer methods compared to widespread pesticide use. Carson describes several campaigns in which these methods have worked rapidly, safely, and cheaply.
It’s easy to understand where Carson is coming from with her condemnation of insecticide companies and their widespread, unnecessary use of poisonous chemicals on the environment. As a society, we have two answers to the problem of insect control. The first, poisoning chemicals, has already proven costly, ineffective, and extremely detrimental to the environment over time. The second, biological controls, has proven cheap, effective, and safe for humans and non-pest animals and insects. The use of biological controls works in conjunction with the rules of nature instead of against them. It leaves intact natural predators of the targeted insect and doesn’t harm the surrounding ecosystem of the targeted insect. There is an extraordinary variety of alternatives to chemical control. Some have already proven successful and others look very promising in the future. My solution, like Carson’s ideal situation, focuses on the use of these biological and alternative controls to eliminate chemical poisoning and environmental destruction by pesticide use.
The use of biological control of insects began in the U.S. more than a hundred years ago. It proved successful then, but when chemical insecticides hit the market, everyone wanted to try them out, turning their backs on the successful biological controls of the past. Their shortsighted and unconsidered goal was to make an insect-free world, not realizing how much nature relies on insects. It has become obvious that insecticides are dangerous in multiple ways and that they don’t work in the long term but this has not stopped their widespread use as a means of control. One of the most successful of the new studies of biological insect control has been in experimental sterilization of insects. Dr. Edward Knipling, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Entomology Research Branch, pioneered this method of sterilizing harmful insects using x-ray exposure, keeping them for reproducing and spreading uncontrollably. Dr. Knipling proposed that sterilized insects be released into an existing insect population. These sterilized males would compete with the normal males, thus reducing the ability of fertile males to reproduce at the rate they normally do. After a while, all fertile males would be eliminated for the ecosystem resulting in the production of only infertile eggs.
The example of the Japanese beetle in Michigan is a great example of the ability of biological control to more effectively control insect overpopulation while reducing the harmful effects of insecticide use on the environment. Michigan state authorities authorized the use of insecticide spray instead of numerous different biological methods that would reduce beetle population because it was the cheapest method of control. Regardless of the extreme adverse effects it was known to have on humans and animals, it was authorized to be sprayed all over the state, including cities and urban areas. Not only is this unethical, to spray people and animals knowing that the chemical is poisonous and not safe for human consumption, but also trying to hide these facts to save some money is ludicrous. This approach to insect control, and the deception of large chemical companies on the population of Michigan was wrong. It refused to take into account the costs of human and animal life that the insect spray affects. It failed to consider the loss of crops by farms, possibly the only source of income these hard working individuals could rely on. The only basis for the use of insecticides in Michigan was that it was cheaper in the short term, but, in reality, this blanket spraying cost Michigan more than it could have possibly imagined.
When harmful insecticides are introduced into the natural world they not only kill the target insects, some time, but they also harm the surrounding ecosystem, and kill natural predators of target insects, allowing evolution to cause even greater overpopulation. The senseless destruction that these chemicals induce has greater costs than benefits, and often is not even properly suited to terminate the insects they target. Alternatives to these poisons are wide-ranging, and the biological and natural controls that have been used in the past or that are yet to be discovered in the future will always be safer than insecticide use. With ingenuity and creativity, scientists have always been able to keep insects in control without harming the rest of the environment or its creatures, so why use poisonous chemicals? There’s no logical answer.
