[1] Published on September 27, 1962, the book documented the environmental harm caused by the indiscriminate use of DDT, a pesticide used by soldiers during World War II.

However, when The New Yorker commissioned a long and well-paid article on the topic from Carson, she began considering writing more than the introduction and conclusion as planned; soon it became a solo project.

Carson attended the ensuing FDA hearings on revising pesticide regulations; she was discouraged by the aggressive tactics of the chemical industry representatives, which included expert testimony that was firmly contradicted by the bulk of the scientific literature she had been studying.

[22] The work's title was inspired by a poem by John Keats, "La Belle Dame sans Merci", which contained the lines "The sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing.

[25] In Silent Spring, Carson relied on evidence from two New York state organic farmers, Marjorie Spock and Mary Richards, and that of biodynamic farming advocate Ehrenfried Pfeiffer in developing her case against DDT.

Scientists of the Food and Drug Administration who reported the discovery of these tumors were uncertain how to classify them, but felt there was some "justification for considering them low grade hepatic cell carcinomas".

[28]Carson predicts increased consequences in the future, especially since targeted pests may develop resistance to pesticides and weakened ecosystems fall prey to unanticipated invasive species.

The fire ant suddenly became the target of a barrage of government releases, motion pictures, and government-inspired stories portraying it as a despoiler of southern agriculture and a killer of birds, livestock, and man.

[34]Despite calls from experts to consider the damage using the pesticides could bring to the environment, the Agriculture Department dismissed the objections and continued on with the program:Urgent protests were made by most of the state conservation departments, by national conservation agencies, and by ecologists and even by some entomologists, calling upon the then Secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Benson, to delay the program at least until some research had been done to determine the effects of heptachlor and dieldrin on wild and domestic animals and to find the minimum amount that would control the ants.

[38] Overall, Silent Spring not only uncovered the many negative effects pesticides have on the environment but also asked for environmental issues to be discussed and treated seriously within the political sphere.

Carson attended the White House Conference on Conservation in May 1962; Houghton Mifflin distributed proof copies of Silent Spring to many of the delegates and promoted the upcoming serialization in The New Yorker.

[40] Though Silent Spring had generated a fairly high level of interest based on pre-publication promotion, this became more intense with its serialization, which began in the June 16, 1962, issue.

Around that time, Carson learned that Silent Spring had been selected as the Book of the Month for October; she said this would "carry it to farms and hamlets all over that country that don't know what a bookstore looks like—much less The New Yorker".

Velsicol threatened legal action against Houghton Mifflin, and The New Yorker and Audubon Magazine unless their planned Silent Spring features were canceled.

[46] According to historian Linda Lear the former US Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, asked in a letter to former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, "Why a spinster with no children was so concerned about genetics?"

[47][48] Monsanto published 5,000 copies of a parody called "The Desolate Year" (1962) which projected a world of famine and disease caused by banning pesticides.

[49] Many critics repeatedly said Carson was calling for the elimination of all pesticides, but she had made it clear she was not advocating this but was instead encouraging responsible and carefully managed use with an awareness of the chemicals' impact on ecosystems.

The chemical industry campaign was counterproductive because the controversy increased public awareness of the potential dangers of pesticides, an early example of the Streisand Effect.

Pesticide use became a major public issue after a CBS Reports television special, The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson, which was broadcast on April 3, 1963.

According to biographer Linda Lear, "in juxtaposition to the wild-eyed, loud-voiced Dr. Robert White-Stevens in white lab coat, Carson appeared anything but the hysterical alarmist that her critics contended".

[57] Of Carson, Maria Popova wrote, "Her lyrical writing rendered her not a mere translator of the natural world, but an alchemist transmuting the steel of science into the gold of wonder.

[71] History professor Gary Kroll wrote, "Rachel Carson's Silent Spring played a large role in articulating ecology as a 'subversive subject'—as a perspective that cuts against the grain of materialism, scientism, and the technologically engineered control of nature.

[79][80] In the 1990s and 2000s, campaigns against the book intensified, in part due to efforts by the tobacco industry to cast larger doubt on science-driven policy as a way of contesting bans on smoking.

[74][75] A 2012 review article in Nature by Rob Dunn[85] commemorating the 50th anniversary of Silent Spring and summarizing the progressive environmental-policy changes made since then, prompted a response in a letter written by Anthony Trewavas and co-signed by 10 others, including Christopher Leaver, Bruce Ames and Peter Lachmann, who quote estimates of 60 to 80 million deaths "as a result of misguided fears based on poorly understood evidence".

According to pro-DDT advocate Amir Attaran, the result of the (activated in 2004) Stockholm Convention banning DDT's use in agriculture "is arguably better than the status quo ... For the first time, there is now an insecticide which is restricted to vector control only, meaning that the selection of resistant mosquitoes will be slower than before.

[96] Silent Spring is mentioned in the 2008 science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, as well as its Tencent 2023 and Netflix 2024 television series adaptations.

[97] In 2011, the American composer Steven Stucky wrote the eponymously titled symphonic poem Silent Spring to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the book's publication.

[98][99][100] In 2019, Bobby, It's Cold Outside, an episode of animated comedy The Simpsons, features a copy of Silent Spring as one of the items burning on the Fox News yule log.

[101] Naturalist David Attenborough has stated that Silent Spring was probably the book that had changed the scientific world the most, after the On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.

[102] Sonic Flower Groove, is the debut studio album by Scottish rock band Primal Scream, it was released on 5 October 1987, features a song titled 'Silent Spring'.