In 2026, the Bay Area Still Has Lots to Learn from ‘Silent Spring’

Silent Spring is one of those books where many people think they know what it says, have opinions about it, even if they haven’t read it.

It’s a science book that, when you sit down and crack it open, surprises you with its technical, but compelling, depth. Carson is an extremely skilled writer. And the book changed the world, opening eyes to patterns and consequences that had been hidden.

We’re now in a time when its lessons are more important than ever: the Make America Healthy Again movement has swept to power in this country with calls for less chemical use.

Superficially, MAHA and its figurehead Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — whose uncle John F. Kennedy, as president, used his administration to defend Carson against the chemical industry’s attacks — appear to share intellectual tenets with Silent Spring: a skepticism of corporate power, concern over environmental toxins, and industrial influence over public health.

But RFK., Jr. has attacked vaccines. And the Trump administration has taken a soft line on regulating pesticides. It’s hard to imagine that Carson would agree, and a close reading of her book can remind us: chemical impacts travel far beyond their intended use, and what the data actually says matters enormously.

Join KQED for a discussion of Silent Spring and its legacy and lessons for us on April 11 at the San Francisco Public Library as part of the Night of Ideas, at 7:30 p.m. inside the Periodical Room. Don’t worry if you haven’t read the book yet. Come just as you are.

The discussion will shine a spotlight on the work of Claudia Polsky, the founding director of the Environmental Law Clinic at UC Berkeley, who is a guest for the discussion.

“Rachel Carson’s book pointed at ways to engage people,” Polsky said, “how you engage people who care about pets, people who are bird watchers, people who care about what’s in breast milk they’re feeding to their children.”

Carson explored how manufactured chemicals found in the environment were appearing in wildlife, in household pets and in our bodies, like no other writer had.

Polsky, in her own work, partly inspired by Carson, has spent years protecting vulnerable people and communities from harmful chemicals. She has represented communities contaminated by PFAs, stubborn “forever chemicals” used to make food packaging, nonstick pans, waterproof materials that don’t break down.

As a deputy attorney general for California, she helped get formaldehyde-laden Brazilian blowout chemicals – which leave hair with a glossy sheen – off the market here by demonstrating the carcinogen was sickening and disabling salon workers. She worked on policies to reduce the risks associated with pesticides and industrial chemicals at the Department of Toxic Substances Control in Sacramento. Most recently, she successfully led a legal fight against the Trump administration to restore hundreds of millions in canceled research funding.

Despite her differences with the Trump administration, Polsky has compassion for some of the MAHA movement’s concerns. She said it has a “good intuition” for the ways in which the public lacks health protections, as well as the government’s “insufficient focus” on broad-level public health and prevention.

Although she points out that the level of skepticism about vaccine safety backed by RFK Jr. lacks empirical support and is unjustified.

In Polsky’s work, however, she seeks to find ways to connect people across political divides. She has a book project in her sights that would focus on how environmental concerns can be detected within human bodies, such as in breast milk.

“I don’t want to write for Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris voters,” she said. “I actually want to write something that speaks to the incredible political horseshoe I’ve seen around issues of human exposure to chemicals … I feel there’s a huge opportunity here once we can get past this hyperpartisan moment.”

Some people have criticized Silent Spring and Rachel Carson for fostering intense fear of chemicals in a way that has partially led to our anti-science moment. People attribute to her a call for a ban on all pesticides. Polsky said laying these critiques at Carson’s door is unfounded.

“I don’t think we can attribute to her the fact that people have over-read what she said and what she testified in Congress. She actually did not call for a ban on pesticides. She said they have their place. It’s much narrower than how they’re deployed.”

Carson encouraged saving DDT – the pesticide she’s most associated with – to control malarial outbreaks. That doesn’t stop her detractors from attributing malarial deaths to her, and by extension, seeking to undermine the case for environmental regulations altogether.

Women, especially, who raise concerns about environmental chemicals are criticized and called hysterical or emotional or over-invested in the issue. This was true of Carson, too, who died of breast cancer in 1964, two years after the book was published.

“She testified about pesticides in front of Congress after a double mastectomy, which I find incredibly poignant,” Polsky said.

“She wore a wig to hide the fact that she had cancer so that [her testimony] wouldn’t be seen as a personal vendetta, which is just so heartbreaking. The idea that if you’re personally affected, you’re seen as unable to make sense of the data rather than as having the highest possible stake in ensuring that people understand the data.”

A more serious issue than people being over-worried about what manufactured chemicals are doing to themselves and their surroundings, Polsky said, is that they don’t seem to be worried enough.