On a Farther Shore (64 page)

Carson told Dorothy that
:
Ibid., January 10, 1956, Muskie.

“many flaws”
:
Ibid., November 27, 1955, Muskie.

Not surprisingly, Dorothy felt
:
Dorothy Freeman to Carson, November 24, 1955, Muskie.

Carson had recently been approached
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, December 2, 1955, Muskie. Carson confessed that she really ought to watch television once in a while so she would have some idea what such programs were like.

She told Marie Rodell that
:
Carson to Marie Rodell, November 29, 1955, Beinecke.

But as she got further
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, February 6, 1956, Muskie.

Carson felt herself
:
Ibid., February 4, 1956, Muskie.

Dorothy, hoping to calm
:
Ibid., February 9, 1956, Muskie.

Dubious, Carson wrote back
:
Ibid.

She decided that television people were
:
Ibid., February 25, 1956, Muskie.

Carson saw the atmosphere
:
Draft outline of Carson’s script, n.d., Beinecke.

Afterward, one of Carson’s neighbors
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, March 15, 1956, Muskie.

In a letter to one of
:
Carson to Sally Cist, April 14, 1956, Beinecke.

In August 1955, Rodell discussed
:
Marie Rodell to J. Robert Moskin, August 29, 1955, Beinecke.

I remember a summer night when
:
Carson, “Help Your Child to Wonder,”
Woman’s Home Companion
, July 1956.

When Dorothy read a draft
:
Dorothy Freeman to Carson, April 11, 1956, Muskie.

That year at Christmas
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, n.d., ca. December 1956, Muskie.

But now Oxford University Press
:
Ibid., December 8, 1956, Muskie.

Dorothy, who for a long time
:
Dorothy Freeman to Carson, n.d., ca. Christmas 1956, Muskie.

A month later, after a hospitalization
:
Carson,
Always, Rachel
, p. 216.

On the morning of January 22, 1954
:
Lapp,
Voyage of the Lucky Dragon
, pp. 1–54. Except as noted in citations to follow, this recounting is based entirely on Ralph E. Lapp’s extraordinary book.

But as early as 1922
:
Hansen,
U.S. Nuclear Weapons
, p. 43.

There were uncertainties
:
Ibid.

During World War II
:
Ibid., pp. 43–44.

The first explosive hydrogen device
:
Ibid., pp. 58–60.

As impressive and frightening
:
Ibid., pp. 60–61.

A year and a half later
:
Ibid., pp. 61–66.

The firing center for
:
Ibid. A post-test report said that “everyone and everything in the northern Marshall Islands had become radiologically contaminated.”

On its return to port
:
Lapp,
Voyage of the Lucky Dragon
, pp. 55–171.

The
New York Times
reported that
: New York Times
, March 17, 1954.

Then, not quite two weeks after
:
Ibid.

On March 24, 1954
:
Ibid., March 25, 1954.

One immediate step
:
Ibid., March 28, 1954.

Then on March 28
:
Ibid.

Another hydrogen bomb was exploded
:
Hansen,
U.S. Nuclear Weapons
, p. 64.

In early April
: New York Times
, April 1, 1954.

U.S. officials started negotiating
:
Ibid.

In July 1954, a team of
:
Ibid., July 5, 1954.

This was the same conclusion
:
Ibid., September 28, 1947.

Even so, the scientists seven years later
:
Ibid., July 5, 1954.

Three months later
:
Ibid., October 14, 1954.

Most were confident
:
Miller,
Under the Cloud
, pp. 33–34.

Between 1951 and 1955
:
“United States Nuclear Tests
:
July 1945 through September 1992,” U.S. Department of Energy, Nevada Operations Office.

In his top-secret report
:
Williams and Cantelon,
American Atom
, pp. 47–55.

The cloud traveled to a great height
:
Ibid.

A few months after
:
Miller,
Under the Cloud
, pp. 58–59.

The far-reaching effects
:
Ibid., pp. 84–106.

Dr. Einstein explained
:
Williams and Cantelon,
American Atom
, pp. 12–14.

Ethel’s execution was
:
Philipson,
Ethel Rosenberg
, pp. 351–352.

President Truman all but shut down
:
Wayne Blanchard, “American Civil Defense 1945–1984
:
The Evolution of Programs and Policies,” National Emergency Center, Monograph Series 2. no. 2, 1985.

Just one month after
: New York Times
, April 1, 1954.

A year later
:
Ibid., June 10, 1955.

In the early 1950s
:
“Survival Under Atomic Attack,” Office of Civil Defense, October 1950.

In 1955, the Civil Defense Administration
:
Garrison,
Bracing for Armageddon
, p. 60.

In 1958, a high-ranking
: New York Times
, September 25, 1958.

But the cost of such a system
:
Blanchard, “American Civil Defense 1945–1984.”

In 1957, President Eisenhower rejected
:
Garrison,
Bracing for Armageddon
, pp. 86–87.

By the 1960s, the question
:
This quote is generally attributed to Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev,
Pravda
, July 20, 1963. Others surely shared the thought.

None of this was lost on
:
Personal recollection. I will never forget the “flash” drills I performed (they were, after all, play-acting farces) or the fact that when I moved from elementary school to junior high I no longer lived close enough to home to go there in the event of an attack. The idea that I would not be able to find my two younger brothers in the chaos of a school evacuation as the missiles began to rain down was a torment I tried not to think about.

In 1943, a sample of
:
William B. Deichmann, “The Debate on DDT,”
Archives of Toxicology
29, no. 1 (1972), Patuxent.

In 1950, about 12 percent
:
“DDT Regulatory History: A Brief Survey (to 1975),” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, July 1975.

Domestic DDT use peaked in 1959
:
Ibid.

These included lindane
:
Deichmann, “Debate on DDT.”

In 1952
:
James B. DeWitt, and John L. George, “Pesticide-Wildlife Review,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Circular 84, 1959, Beinecke.

The first tests were inconclusive
:
Clarence Cottam and Elmer Higgins, “DDT
:
Its Effect on Fish and Wildlife,” U.S. Department of the Interior Circular 11, 1948, Patuxent.

“As soon as DDT was taken outdoors”
:
Arnold L. Nelson and Eugene W. Surber, “DDT Investigations by the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1946,” U.S. Department of the Interior Special Scientific Report No. 41, Patuxent.

The nature of complications
:
Joseph P. Linduska, “The Effects of DDT on Wildlife,”
Shade Tree
20, no. 12 (December 1947), Patuxent.

Some effects of DDT spraying
:
Joseph P. Linduska, and Eugene W. Surber, “Effects of DDT and Other Insecticides on Fish and Wildlife: Summary of Investigations During 1947,” U.S. Department of the Interior Circular 15, 1948, Patuxent.

In one orchard
:
Ibid.

“Although the immediate advantages”
:
C. H. Hoffman, and Joseph P. Linduska, “Some Considerations of the Biological Effects of DDT,”
Scientific Monthly
69, no. 2 (August 1949), Patuxent.

A year later
:
Joseph P. Linduska, “DDT and the Balance of Nature,” Proceedings and Papers, International Technical Conference on the Protection of Nature, 1950, Patuxent.

Many types of control projects
:
Ibid.

By 1951, the Patuxent pesticides project
:
Chandler S. Robbins, et al., “Effects of Five-Year DDT Application on Breeding Bird Population,”
Journal of Wildlife Management
15, no. 2 (April 1951), Patuxent.

Meanwhile, an ever-widening
:
Allen H. Benton, “Effects on Wildlife of DDT Used for Control of Dutch Elm Disease,”
Journal of Wildlife Management
15, no. 1 (January 1951), Patuxent.

The 1948 spraying
:
Ibid.

Only a relative handful
:
Ibid.

In one test, hatchlings
:
Robert T. Mitchell et al., “The Effects of DDT upon the Survival and Growth of Nestling Songbirds,”
Journal of Wildlife Management
, no. 1 (January 1953), Patuxent.

Experiments at Patuxent
:
James B. DeWitt et al., “DDT vs. Wildlife: Relationships Between Quantities Ingested, Toxic Effects and Tissue Storage,”
Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association
44, no. 1 (January 1955), Patuxent.

Another “subtle” effect of DDT
:
John L. George, “Effects on Fish and Wildlife of Chemical Treatments of Large Areas,”
Journal of Forestry
57, no. 4 (April 1959), Patuxent.

By 1956 there were
:
Paul F. Springer, “DDT
:
Its Effects on Wildlife,”
Passenger Pigeon
19, no. 4 (winter 1957), Patuxent.

its best guess at a “safe” concentration
:
John L. George, “Effects on Fish and Wildlife of Chemical Treatments of Large Areas,”
Journal of Forestry
57, no. 4 (April 1959), Patuxent.

The threat to aquatic species
:
Ibid.

A campaign to eradicate gypsy moths
:
Ibid.

Immediate mortality of individuals
:
Ibid.

In 1950, the American Medical Association’s
:
“Report of the Council,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
142, no. 13 (April 1, 1950).

The committee said that
:
“Report to the Council,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
144, no. 2 (September 9, 1950).

Organophosphate poisoning
:
Ibid.

The AMA was worried
:
“Insecticide Storage in Adipose Tissue,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
145, no. 10 (March 10, 1951).

the AMA was advising physicians
:
“Aldrin and Dieldrin Poisoning,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
146, no. 4 (May 26, 1951).

In 1952, the Committee on Pesticides
:
“Report to the Council
:
Health Hazards of Electric Vaporizing Devices for Insecticides,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
149, no. 4 (May 24, 1952).

Although cases of
:
Ibid.

categorically opposed the use of insecticide vaporizers
:
“Report to the Council: Abuse of Insecticide Fumigating Devices,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
156, no. 6 (October 9, 1954).

Two years earlier the AMA
:
“Report to the Council
:
Toxic Effects of Technical Benzene Hexachloride and Its Principal Isomers,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
. 147, no. 6 (October 6, 1952).

In one case an eighteen-month-old
:
“Report to the Council
:
Abuse of Insecticide Fumigating Devices.”

“Insecticidal poisons that”
:
Ibid.

By the spring of 1957
:
Thompson Chemicals Corporation press release, May 1, 1957, Beinecke.

In 1954, Dr. Wayland J. Hayes, Jr.
:
“Present Status of Our Knowledge of DDT Intoxication,”
American Journal of Public Health
45, April 1955.

The safety of DDT was also official policy
:
USDA press release, May 10, 1957, Beinecke.

In 1956, Carson served on
:
Committee roster, August 23, 1956, Beinecke.

Attentive as always
:
Carson to Paul Brooks, February 25, 1956, Beinecke.

Polite but understandably defensive
:
Paul Brooks to Carson, February 29, 1956, Beinecke.