But we are not primarily concerned with the amount of radioactive iodine on the ground. It is not believed that we absorb significant amounts through the skin or even by inhalation. What is important is the entrance of this material into the food chains. From that point the route to the human body is short and direct. From contaminated pasture grass to the cow, from fresh cow’s milk to the human consumer; and once in the body, the iodine finds its natural target, the thyroid gland. It follows that small children, with their small thyroids and their relatively large intake of milk, are endangered more than are adults.
Only a few years ago, it was declared by a scientist testifying before the Committee on Atomic Energy that radioiodine from worldwide fallout is not a problem of concern to humans, and it is not expected that it will become a problem in the future. At the time this prediction was made, there was no national system for sampling. Most of the sampling done since then seems to have suffered from various defects. For example, data on milk supplies for large cities have little meaning, because such milk is a mixture of collections from various areas and the occasional high levels of contamination are easily obscured. Until the summer of 1962 no attempt seems to have been made to collect fallout data and milk contamination data at the same place and time. It appears also that much of the monitoring data reported by the AEC refers to measurements of gamma-ray intensity from the ground, or of beta radioactivity near the ground or in the air. However, as we have seen, what is important is not the radioactive source outside the body, but the entrance of the radioactivity into the food chain and so into the human body.
In the summer of 1962, the Utah State Department of Health began to make its own evaluation of this problem and quickly decided that a hazardous situation existed. All of the five bomb tests carried out in Nevada in July 1962 had carried radioactive iodine into Utah. As exposures began to exceed the yearly radiation protection guide, the state recommended protective measures. Of course, for radioactive iodine, these are very simple: cows may be transferred to stored feed; contaminated milk may be diverted to processing plants for use in ways that will assure an appropriate lapse of time before it is consumed. Knapp, of the AEC’s Division of Biology and Medicine, made other observations in Utah, examining single samples of milk rather than dealing in averages, or in composite samples. And these studies bore out the contention that high levels of radioactive iodine were occurring in certain areas. The Utah situation is probably not unique. A few months ago the Committee for Nuclear Information testified before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and declared that a number of local populations, especially in Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and probably other communities scattered throughout the continental United States, have been exposed to fallout of medically unacceptable proportions, especially in the cases of children who drink fresh, locally produced milk. The evidence provided by the Committee, as well as that collected in the recently released Knapp report, would seem to support this conclusion. Yet as recently as May of this year the Public Health Service stated that I131 doses from weapons testing have not caused undue risk to health.
My reason for reviewing these facts, which I am sure are familiar to most of you, is simply to emphasize that we have not yet become sophisticated enough to view these matters as the ecological problems [ … ] they are. Of course there are various ways of studying the problem; there are various angles from which it must be approached, and what I am suggesting does not necessarily preclude other approaches. But I think that the ecological aspect of it must be considered. We must remember that we have introduced these things into dynamic systems that comprise our environment, and it is not enough to monitor the entrance of the contaminant into the environment at that single point. We must be prepared, with the best understanding of all concerned – the physician, the biologist, the ecologist – to follow the contaminants through whatever path they take, through physical and biological systems. This demands more extensive studies than any that have been undertaken, more comprehensive monitoring programs, and more realistic evaluations.
In my opinion, we have been too unwilling to concede the possibility of hazard or of the actual existence of hazard. We have been too unwilling to give attention to the preparation of countermeasures to cope with the hazardous situations when they do arise. Perhaps not now, but perhaps in the future that will arise. Indeed, a report to the Surgeon General by the National Advisory Committee on Radiation in 1962 revealed that except in the case of I131, no effective countermeasures exist. In the climate of euphoria that is generated by repeated assurances that all is well, there is little public support and there is little money for the kind of research that needs to be done. I, for one, would like to see the public considered [ … ] capable of hearing the facts about the hazards that exist in the modern environment. I should like to have them considered capable of making intelligent decisions as to prudent and necessary measures that ought to be taken.
Currently, in this specific area of radiation hazards, I think there is a certain danger that we will feel that the recent test ban treaty makes the whole fallout problem obsolete. This, in my opinion, is not true. The longer-lived isotopes will remain in the upper atmosphere for years to come, and we are still destined to receive heavy fallout from past tests. Another very important point is that underground tests have been known to produce atmospheric contamination through venting in the past, and they will almost certainly continue to do so.
The third point is that environmental contamination by radioactive materials is apparently an inevitable part of the atomic age. It is an accompaniment of the so-called “peaceful” uses of the atom as well as of the testing of weapons. This contamination will come about occasionally by accidents, and perpetually by the disposal of wastes.
Underlying all of these problems of introducing contamination into our world is the question of moral responsibility – responsibility, not only to our own generation, but to those of the future. We are properly concerned about somatic damage to generations now alive; but the threat is infinitely greater to the generations unborn; to those who have no voice in the decisions of today, and that fact alone makes our responsibility a heavy one.
I recently read some calculations made by Professor H.J. Muller. His general conclusion was that the amount of somatic damage from radiation as it is distributed today is far less than the damage which this same radiation, received and transmitted by the present generation, will inflict upon posterity. His further conclusion was that hereditary damage should be the chief touchstone in the setting of permissible or acceptable dose limits. But apparently we have a long way to go and much enlightenment to gain before any agreement can be reached on standards of this kind.
The question of genetic damage from harmful elements in the environment is one that particularly interests me. Elsewhere I have made the suggestion that pesticide chemicals should be viewed with great suspicion as possible agents of genetic damage to man. This suggestion has been challenged by some on the grounds that there is no proof that these chemicals are having such an effect. I don’t believe we should wait for some dramatic demonstration before making a thorough study of the potential genetic effect of all chemicals that are widely introduced into the human environment. By the time such a discovery is made otherwise, it will be too late to eradicate them. Some of the chemicals that are now in use as herbicides and insecticides do have mutagenic effects on lower organisms. Others have the ability to cause chromosome damage or a change in chromosome number, and as you know this type of chromosomal abnormality may be associated with a wide variety of congenital defects in man, including mental retardation. I think we should test the pesticide chemicals on several of the organisms that reproduce rapidly and so lend themselves to genetic experiments. If the chemicals then prove mutagenic, or otherwise disruptive of genetic systems in a variety of test organisms, then I think we should withdraw them from use. I am not impressed with the argument that they might not have similar effects in man. After all, the science of genetics was
founded when an obscure Austrian monk performed some experiments on garden peas; and the basic hereditary laws he discovered have proved generally applicable in both plants and animals.
Again, another fact of far-reaching significance, that influences in the external environment can cause mutations, was discovered by Professor Muller in experiments on an insect; yet few doubt its applicability to man. Indeed, one of the most striking phenomena in biology is the basic similarity of genetic systems throughout the living world. Yet again and again, in this whole field of environmental influences in relation to life, and this includes our theme of pollution and its impact on life, we meet a strange reluctance to concede that man is, himself, susceptible to harm. It may be admitted freely, for example, that an agricultural chemical entering a river could kill thousands of fish; but it will be denied that this chemical could do any harm to the person who might drink the water. Reports of the decimation of whole populations of birds are shrugged off with the thought that it can’t happen to us. If we carry this view to its logical conclusion, it would make a mockery of all the elaborate testing, involving millions of laboratory animals; yet I have been astonished to discover how frequently it crops up, if not stated directly, then at least as the implied basis for an official point of view or decision, or perhaps more often for the lack of any decisive action. I wonder sometimes whether this attitude may not have a deep significance which is relative to our theme tonight. It seems to me to imply a sort of rejection of our past – a reluctance or an unreadiness to accept the fact that man, like all other living creatures, is part of the vast ecosystems of the earth, subject to the forces of the environment.
As I look back through history I find a parallel. I ask you to recall the uproar that followed Charles Darwin’s announcement of his theories of evolution. The concept of man’s origin from pre-existing forms was hotly and emotionally denied, and the denials came not only from the lay public but from Darwin’s peers in science. Only after many years did the concepts set forth in The Origin of Species become firmly established. Today, it would be hard to find any person of education who would deny the facts of evolution. Yet so many of us deny the obvious corollary: that man is affected by the same environmental influences that control the lives of all the many thousands of other species to which he is related by evolutionary ties.
I find it quite fascinating to speculate what hidden fears in man, what long-forgotten experiences, have made him so loath to acknowledge first, his origins and then his relationship to that environment in which all living things evolved and coexist. The Victorians at last freed themselves from the fears and superstitions that made them recoil in shock and dismay from Darwinian concepts. And I look forward to a day when we, also, can accept the facts of our true relationship to our environment. I believe that only in that atmosphere of intellectual freedom can we solve the problems before us now.
Thank you.
* One billionth (10– 9) of a curie, a unit of radioactivity.
31
[1963]
Letter to Dorothy Freeman
CARSON SPENT what would be her final summer in Maine, hoping for more time to say all the things she wanted to say, but knowing it was an ephemeral hope. She planned a book on evolutionary biology, but most of all she wanted time to expand her 1956 article “Help Your Child to Wonder” into a book on the value and necessity of a sense of wonder in the modern world.
Although she rarely spoke of her illness, she was able to write about death through her understanding of the rhythms, enduring cycles, and patterns of the natural world.
This letter, written to her friend Dorothy Freeman, after the two had spent a sunlit morning at Newagen, one of their favorite places along the shore of the Sheepscot, was intended to acknowledge her approaching death and to comfort her friend. With Freeman’s permission it was read by the Reverend Duncan Howlett at the memorial service Carson asked him to hold after her death. Rachel Carson died at her home in Maryland of cancer and heart disease on April 14, 1964, at the age of fifty-six.
DEAR ONE,
This is a postscript to our morning at Newagen, something I think I can write better than say. For me it was one of the loveliest of the summer’s hours, and all the details will remain in my memory: that blue September sky, the sounds of wind in the spruces and surf on the rocks, the gulls busy with their foraging, alighting with deliberate grace, the distant views of Griffiths Head and Todd Point, today so clearly etched, though once half seen in swirling fog. But most of all I shall remember the Monarchs, that unhurried westward drift of one small winged form after another, each drawn by some invisible force. We talked a little about their migration, their life history. Did they return? We thought not; for most, at least, this was the closing journey of their lives.
But it occurred to me this afternoon, remembering, that it had been a happy spectacle, that we had felt no sadness when we spoke of the fact that there would be no return. And rightly – for when any living thing has come to the end of its life cycle we accept that end as natural.
For the Monarch, that cycle is measured in a known span of months. For ourselves, the measure is something else, the span of which we cannot know. But the thought is the same: when that intangible cycle has run its course it is a natural and not unhappy thing that a life comes to its end.
That is what those brightly fluttering bits of life taught me this morning. I found a deep happiness in it – so, I hope, may you. Thank you for this morning.
Credits
1. “Undersea” from The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 160 (September 1937), pp. 322–325.
2. “My Favorite Recreation” from St. Nicholas Magazine, vol. 49 (July 1922), p. 999.
3. “Fight for Wildlife Pushes Ahead” from the Richmond Times-Dispatch Sunday Magazine, March 20, 1938.
“Chesapeake Eels Seek the Sargasso Sea” from the Baltimore Sunday Sun, October 9, 1938.
4. Ace of Nature’s Aviators. (1944) Manuscript. Rachel Carson Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. [Hereafter cited as Rachel Carson Papers.]
5. Road of the Hawks. (1945) Unpublished fragment. Rachel Carson Papers.
6. An Island I Remember. (1946) Unpublished fragment. Rachel Carson Papers.
7. “Mattamuskeet: A National Wildlife Refuge” from Conservation in Action, no. 4. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947. Illustrated by Katherine L. Howe.
8. Memo to Mrs. Eales on Under the Sea-Wind. (ca. 1942) Rachel Carson Papers.
9. “Lost Worlds: The Challenge of the Islands” from The Wood Thrush, vol. 4, no. 5 (May – June 1949), pp. 179–187.
10. Speech given at the New York Herald-Tribune Book and Author Luncheon, October 16, 1951, New York, New York. Rachel Carson Papers.
11. Jacket notes for the RCA Victor recording of Claude Debussy’s La Mer by the NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini, conductor, 1951. Rachel Carson Papers.
Speech given at the National Symphony Orchestra Benefit Luncheon, September 25, 1951, Washington, D.C. Rachel Carson Papers.
12. Remarks at the acceptance of the National Book Award for nonfiction, January 29, 1952, New York, New York. Rachel Carson Papers.
13. Design for Nature Writing. Remarks made on acceptance of the John Burroughs Medal for excellence in nature writing, April 7, 1952, New York, New York, from The Atlantic Naturalist (May – August 1952), pp. 232–234.
14. “Mr. Day’s Dismissal” from The Washington Post, April 22, 1953, p. A26.
15. Preface to the Second Edition of The Sea Around Us, by Rachel Carson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961).
16. “Our Ever-Changing Shore” from Holiday, vol. 24 (July 1958), pp. 71–120.
17. Four Fragments from Carson’s Field Notebooks. (1950–1952). Rachel Carson Papers.
18. The Edge of the Sea. Paper presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science Symposium, “The
Sea Frontier,” December 29, 1953, Boston, Massachusetts. Rachel Carson Papers.
19. The Real World Around Us. Speech given at the Theta Sigma Phi Matrix Table Dinner, April 21, 1954, Columbus, Ohio. Rachel Carson Papers.
20. “Biological Sciences” from Good Reading (New York: New American Library, 1956).
21. Two Letters to Dorothy and Stanley Freeman, August 8, 1956, and October 7, 1956, from Always Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, edited by Martha Freeman (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995).
22. The Lost Woods. A Letter to Curtis and Nellie Lee Bok, December 12, 1956. Rachel Carson Papers.
23. Clouds. Script written for the Ford Foundation’s TV-Radio Workshop, “Something About the Sky,” CBS Omnibus, March 11, 1957. Rachel Carson Papers.
24. “Vanishing Americans” from The Washington Post, April 10, 1959, p. A26.
25. “To Understand Biology” from Humane Biology Projects (New York: The Animal Welfare Institute, 1960).
Preface to Animal Machines: The New Factory Farming Industry, by Ruth Harrison (London: Vincent Stuart, LTC., 1964).
26. “A Fable for Tomorrow” from Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1962), pp. 1–3.
27. Speech given to the Women’s National Press Club, December 5, 1962, Washington, D.C. Rachel Carson Papers.
28. A New Chapter to Silent Spring. Speech given to the Garden Club of America, January 8, 1963, New York, New York. Published in the Bulletin of the Garden Club of America (May 1963). Rachel Carson Papers.
Lost Woods Page 22