Silent Spring

I recently read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. It seemed the thing to do because it’s famous, I’d never read it before, and it was sitting on our bookshelf. Carson describes many examples of sprayings of deadly chemicals that killed or sickened many people, animals, and plants other than the ones it was intended to destroy. Knowing that this book is decades old, I breathed a sigh of relief to myself, thankful we don’t use DDT anymore.

However, I realized later that something worse had happened in the decades between when Silent Spring was written and when I was born. Somehow, we all, or at least my generation, had become immune to the worries about chemicals in our environment. Many times, while heating up leftovers in the microwave using a plastic container, I think to myself, “I shouldn’t do that since plastic in the microwave can create carcinogens.” But 90% of the time I go ahead and do it anyway. Why?

I justify it because I’m already surrounded by carcinogens I can’t control. I live in the second most polluted county in Indiana and breathe the factory air all day; in fact, I was probably exposed to some of those chemicals already in my mother’s womb. I try to buy organic food when I can find it and afford it, but much of the food I eat is covered in chemicals that I may or may not be able to wash off. My water may not always be safe. (Since living in our current apartment, there have been two boil orders, both of which we didn’t know about until after they were over.) People have smoked around me, sending hundreds of chemicals my way. (Smoking sections in restaurants are a joke, unless there’s a wall to stop the air.) And, like in my example, I’ve been using plastics, perhaps in inappropriate ways for years. These are just the things I’m aware and come to mind. Our society is full of chemicals, many of them dangerous over time.

So as I’m getting ready to microwave my spaghetti, I think, “Who cares? I already have all kinds of carcinogens building up in my body, which will probably give me cancer at some point. What’s one more microwaved meal?” I assume that I have no control over my environment or the substances that enter my body, and to a large extent, I don’t. When did it become ok to allow oneself to be slowly poisoned to death?