It’s 50 years since US author Rachel Carson wrote her groundbreaking book Silent Spring, an expose on the dangerous impact of pesticides used in farming on wildlife and our own health.
At the time she was ridiculed, hounded and unfairly criticised. But in the end her message proved too strong and has been widely credited for the US ban on the pesticide DDT.
As environmentalists applaud her legacy, an interesting question to ask is, if she was still alive today what subject would she be writing about it? What environmental issue is being underplayed or ignored by policymakers and industry?
Despite the success of her book, the overuse and misuse of pesticides around the world is still a major problem. In a disturbing report on pesticide use in China, a local environmental official explained that "if the guidelines say to use one bottle cap’s worth of pesticide, the farmers will use three, just to be sure."
There is more scientific knowledge today about the impact of environmental toxins, including pesticides, on our health. But campaigners are still calling for more action to tackle issues like mercury poisoning from coal-fired power stations and bishenol-A (BPA), a chemical used in a number of everyday plastics.
In 2010, a report from the US president’s Cancer Panel said the number of cancers caused by our growing exposure to environmental toxins had been "grossly underestimated". Biologist Sandra Steingraber who produced a film on the issue, still says there’s a "taboo about telling industry and agriculture that practices must change to prevent cancer".
In terms of human health, there are also growing concerns about the overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture and human health. Health experts fear that some types of intensive farming (seen as essential for increasing meat consumption), particularly pig and poultry units, have become too dependent on sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics designed to promote animal growth. The result is the spread of antibiotic-resistance and potentially, new superbugs that are untreatable with existing antibiotics.
More recently, there has been a study suggesting GM crops can cause health damage in rats, though claims about harmful impacts on humans are as yet unproven.
However, the biggest challenge faced by humans is something largely unknown half a century ago, namely climate change and the impacts of rising levels of greenhouse gases. What for example, will be the implications of an ice-free Arctic or the release of methane emissions from melting icecaps and runaway climate change?
The failure of the major polluting countries to agree to reduce carbon emissions and tackle climate change is probably the biggest silence of all.
