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Section Three: Unintended Consequences

A Question of Impacts

Pesticides kill. We know that for killing pests is what pesticides are designed to do. The real question is — Does the use of pesticides pose a threat to human health? Or to the environment?

bird The issue was confronted most dramatically in a book published in 1962 — Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Combining the incisiveness of a trained biologist with the expressiveness of a poet, she articulated concerns felt by many — but at that point expressed by only a few. She wrote of the interdependence of all parts of nature. And she catalogued the indications of “irrecoverable“ pollution inflicted by the rapidly growing and pervasive use of “chemicals totally outside the limits of biologic experience.”
 
At the time, her words earned her harsh criticism and even derision. Eventually, however, her treatise on pesticide pollution had a profound impact on society. The answer to Carson's warnings came in many forms — increased environmental awareness, an exploding national consciousness that culminated in the first Earth Day and a political consensus that led to passage of major laws aimed at protecting the environment.

From Carson's day to our own, widespread pesticide reliance has frequently shown itself to have serious downsides. As the principles of ecology might have forewarned, deadly chemicals applied outdoors do not remain in place. And, unfortunately, their impacts are seldom restricted to a narrow set of targets.

Silent Spring is thoroughly ecological. It recognized indiscriminate pesticide use as an attack on the biosphere itself, not just another human health problem.

Despite the chemical industry's attacks, Silent Spring led to important changes in ecological research, in laws and in people's ways of looking at things. It would be nice to say that the earth's problems of chemical contamination were thereby solved; but they were not. The fight goes on.

Richard Brewer 1

As attention to the principles of ecology would likely have suggested, deadly chemicals applied outdoors do not remain in place.  And, unfortunately, their impacts are seldom restricted to a narrow set of targets.

Estimated environmental & social costs 
of pesticide use in the US2
Costs Millions of $/year
Public health impacts 787
Domestic animals deaths/contamination 30
Loss of natural enemies 520
Cost of pesticide resistance 1,400
Honeybee & pollination losses 320
Crop losses 942
Fishery losses 24
Bird losses 2,100
Groundwater contamination 1,800
Government regulations to prevent damage 200
TOTAL 8,123

 

1.  Brewer, Richard, The Science of Ecology, 1994.

2. Pimentel, David, et al, "Environmental and Economic Impacts of Pesticide Use" in The Pesticide Question:  Environment, Economics, and Ethics, David Pimentel and Hugh Lehman, eds, 1993.

 

 


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The url for this page is http://www.foe.org/safefood/groundwater/three.html
Posted January 7, 2000
Copyright Friends of the Earth, 2000
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