On June 5, 1963, Rachel Carson testified before the Senate Commerce Committee. She was 56, dying of breast cancer, and had spent the previous year being systematically attacked by the chemical industry as hysterical, communist, a spinster, and unqualified — anything to discredit what she had written.

What she had written was Silent Spring, published in 1962. In it, she documented the ecological destruction caused by synthetic pesticides — particularly DDT — with the meticulous care of the scientist she was and the clear-eyed prose of the writer she also was.

The chemical industry spent what would be equivalent to millions of dollars today to suppress the book before publication and discredit Carson after. Former Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson wrote privately that because she was unmarried despite being attractive, she was probably a Communist.

Carson told the senators that the spraying programs were altering the basic structure of ecosystems, contaminating groundwater, and killing birds, fish, and beneficial insects alongside the target pests. She asked for independent oversight of pesticide approval.

Congress acted. The Environmental Protection Agency was created partly in response to the public reckoning Silent Spring triggered. DDT was banned in 1972.

Carson died in April 1964. She never saw any of it.