When I was heading home from work today, I noticed a pest control truck at the traffic light. It had an animated picture of a “pest” on the side. Oddly, it made me laugh because it reminded me of a Pixar movie where they add vehicles in the midst of traffic or in the middle of town.
They include trucks in which kids can relate to like the pizza delivery,pest control or post office truck. I thought about how friendly and safe it made the pesticide control seem to be.
After reading Rachel Carson’s excerpt, I thought even more about the truck. I couldn’t help but to think about where it was going and what it was going to spray. I thought about the different chemicals that are sprayed and the numerous amounts of fertilizers the town puts throughout the city parks. I then thought about all the kids and people that go sometime after the spray and play in the area. I thought about the 500 new chemicals that are introduced a year into the United States from labs. It made me think of the Summer in New York where they would schedule pesticide sprays and we would be forewarned to stay off the streets at night. Furthermore, we were told to turn off the air conditioning and to close our windows. It seemed simple and harmless to do, but looking back it seems absurd that we almost seemingly go to war with the mosquitoes- like an air raid. I started questioning whether or not it was a good thing that they sprayed. Rachel Carson stated,
“disease carrying insects become important where human beings are crowded..then control of some sort becomes necessary.”
How necessary was the spraying in Long Island?
Rachel Carson discusses that it seems to do more harm than good to try to control the insect population. I looked online and found an article that discussed the negatives following those events in the Northeast during the West Nile Scare Coincidentally, the article happened to thank Rachel Carson’s book for the concept of the paper. It further exemplified the need for the term of “biocide” to replace the word pesticide. Who would’ve thought that the business of the lobsterman of the Long Island Sound would’ve been affected while we sat in our homes?
It’s crazy to think of the unforeseen long term affects of our actions. It’s like Albert Schweitzer said, “Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.” The public looks for the government to solve problems. We hear on the news about a disease- carrying insect and go into a hysteria. We trust the government to take our safety in their hands, but are they just looking for an easy solution without thinking of the consequences? I’m seeing things differently and questioning everything.
myecofootprint 