Chapter 10 "Indiscriminately from the Skies" Summary

Carson recalls the World War II origin of widespread spraying of chemicals as a result of the new organic insecticides and a surplus of airplanes. Before the war, such chemicals had been handled with extreme caution, and now they were dropped from the sky, in many cases without warning to the people living below. This chapter details two examples of spraying campaigns that had widespread and devastating consequences.

The first example is that of the gypsy moth. Despite successful natural controls of the moth in the northeast, a program of "eradication" of the moth by chemical spraying was begun in 1956. The program began with the spraying of nearly 1,000,000 acres. Despite complaints and strong opposition, the next year's spraying included 3,000,000 acres. Many of the areas sprayed were residential, despite the fact that the gypsy...