Silent Spring

Critical Thinking Question:  Consider what you learned while reading Silent Spring.  Who is the Rachel Carson of our day that is raising awareness about the many toxic chemicals in our everyday products?  Include your thoughts in your blog.

In September of 1962, Silent Spring made instant waves in the realm of environmental health. During the era when Silent Spring was written, environmental health was an idea of a field, but since then now in 2016, environmental health has become a key component of public health. During Carson's time, people didn't know what was in or on their food, what was put into the ground their own houses were built on or what things that they encountered daily could cause damage to their bodies over time. Carson's book broke the silence on a topic that most kept avoiding, it opened the country and the world into a conversation on how our earth and our human community were being killed by the very people should be protecting it, us.

Prior to 1962 and Silent Spring, DDT, Dieldrin, Aldrin and other insecticides were aggressively being used, as Carson put it, as "elixirs of death." Since 1962, some of these insecticides have been terminated in the U.S. but they are still used in other places in the world and there are chemicals that are far worse in our hygiene products and every day environment.

If I were to think of who might be a "Rachel Carson" of our time, two people would come to mind. First, there is our professor Barbara Sattler, who is teaching us to be environmentally conscious and how to address public health issues that intersect with environmental health. In addition, Dr. Sattler's fight against fracking and advocacy for other environmental issues makes her among the leading experts in environmental health. As I am gaining my nursing education at the same time as my MPH, I realize that as a future Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL), I must "Integrate knowledge about social, political, economic, environmental and historical issues into the analysis of and potential solutions to professional and healthcare issues" as well as "demonstrate stewardship, including an awareness of global environmental, health, political, and geo-economic factors, in the design of patient care," according to the AACN CNL White Paper. Getting an environmental perspective from a nurse is so crucial for me as a future nurse since I will experiencing the effects of toxins and chemicals throughout my lifetime practice.

The second "Rachel Carson" of our time is toxicologist Jane Hoolihan, who we got to watch in Week 2 of class. Her Skindeep database makes people aware of the toxins and chemicals in the personal hygiene products that we use everyday. If it would not have been for her Skindeep database, most people in the public would not know what chemicals are in our the things we use on a daily basis, which might cause problems in or on our bodies. Having the Skindeep database available to the public exposes the chemicals in our bodies and allows the everyday person to make better decisions on the things they use.

When Carson finished Silent Spring, she warned the reader that "it is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth." This last line was stern warning that if we don't start caring about the earth, we will destroy it beyond repair. Carson's Silent Spring has become a classic in Environmental Health and has made her one of the heavy hitters of her time when it came to exposing the dangers of the toxins and chemicals that either are used in this country or in other parts of the world. We all need to be the"Rachel Carson's" of the world if we are to save it for the future generations.