Rachel Carson-What Would You Do?
Rachel Carson was a trained biologist and a best-selling author. In her writing, Carson presented scientific facts from an ecological perspective
poetic writing style. She
made science interesting and understandable to regular people. She was best known for her books Silent Spring and T
Around Us. Her writing about ecology and the
dangers of pesticides was essential to the start of the environmental movement.
[1] In January 1958, Rachel Carson received a letter from her friend Olga Owens Huckins. Huckins lived in an area of Massachusetts where the
was trying to get rid of mosquitoes. They had used
planes
to
spray a mixture of fuel oil and DDT (a pesticide, which is something that kills pests
as insects, weeds and rodents) all over the area
around Huckins' home. DDT was supposedly harmless but, the morning after the spraying, Hu
found several of her favorite birds dead
outside her house. And the spraying did not even kill all of the mosquitoes; in fact, that summer there v
more of them than ever before. Huckins asked Carson if she knew
someone in Washington who could help prevent future spraying.
[2] Carson had been hearing about DDT since a Swiss chemist discovered it could be used to kill insects in 1939. To many people, DDT seeme
miracle substance. Farmers were excited about saving their
crops from pests. Doctors and others were excited about saving people's lives by
disease-carrying insects. But to Carson, DDT appeared to be
dangerous to all living creatures.
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Select the correct answer.
How does the author draw a connection between Carson's warnings about pesticides and her goal to educate people about pesticides?
OA. by explaining pesticides' effects on living creatures
OB.
OC.
by describing a fable that Carson wrote
by warning about the dangers of acute pesticide poisoning
OD. by describing other books Carson has written