One biologist's book led directly to a nationwide pesticide ban

Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring documented how the pesticide DDT built up in the food chain, thinning the eggshells of birds like the bald eagle nearly to extinction. The chemical industry attacked her personally and scientifically, but the book helped trigger a US ban on DDT in 1972 and the creation of the EPA.

— Rachel Carson, Silent Spring — Houghton Mifflin, 1962
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