Forcing The Spring By Gottlieb

During the past haft-century, issues and concerns surrounding human health have profoundly influenced the movement of environmentalism. The problems with the overpopulation, the emergence of disease, and the accumulation of toxics have been a foundation for environmentalists to look at and define the orientation for the environmental movement. Therefore, more and more controversial debates around environmentalism have been raised in order to ensure a healthy environment for humans.

The problem I would like to firstly address is the accumulation of toxics which has been started from the World War II and the Cold War until now. As what Gottlieb said in his book “Forcing the Spring”, “The cold war was a pivotal factor in influencing the state

We all knew about DDT which was used universally because most of people thought the product was harmless to humans. However, DDT is able to build up in mammal body including humans. The storage of DDT can begin with the smallest in-take of the chemical and continue until high levels are reached. At this point, the threat of poisoning and organ degeneration is very real. According to many scientists, “DDT’s action is primarily on the central nervous systems of man; the cerebellum and the higher motor cortex are thought to be the area chiefly affected” ( Carson, 192). Some medical men believe that intermittent exposures to chemicals may produce hypersensitivity in which one person allergic to dust or pollen, sensitive to a poison, or

From one report, “poisonous chemicals traveled from a manufacturing plant in Colorado to farming district several miles away, there to poison wells, sicken humans and livestock, and damage crops… Farmers began to report unexplained sickness among livestock; the complained of extensive crop damage. Foliage turned yellow, plants failed to mature, and many crops were killed outright” (Carson, 43). Besides water, the use of chemicals also affects the other earth’s basic resources, the soil. As we know, soil, plants, and animals are strictly connected because plants need soil to grow, and animals need plants in order to survive. In the soil, there are numerous essential organisms such as bacteria, fungi, algae which are the principal agents of decay and nitrogen fixation, and earthworms which are geologic agents for the transport of soil (Carson, 55). But when poisonous chemicals are carried down into the soil, these vital organisms are likely to be killed because their habitats are destroyed: “A broad spectrum insecticide tends to kill the burrowing larval stages of a crop-destroying insect ended up to prevent nitrogen-fixing bacteria from forming the necessary root nodules on leguminous plants, cause the disruption of other