• S VINITHA
• KANNA MUTHAIAH

Traditionally, when scholars discuss the efforts to change environmental policy, their chief consideration is the work of natural scientists and social scientists researchers who measure the impact of pollution and other destructive forces on the environment. However, in this paper I propose that a more literary work, such as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) has an equally important impact on changing policy. Carson wrote her cross-disciplinary book in response to the virtually unregulated yet widespread use of pesticides in the 1960s. Silent Spring, in its combination of research, case study and literary writing, went on to affect and initiate change in the regulation of chemical insect control and the banning of the synthetic pesticide DDT. Carson was writing against an orthodoxy which placed man as master and controller of nature, and through her book's policy-changing and research-inspiring results, Carson showed the excessive use of pesticides not only to be hazardous, but also immoral. Her book serves as a pioneering text of the modern environmental movement. Using Silent Spring as an exemplary case of a literary text with the power to influence environmental policy, I ultimately ask in this paper what it means to consider the environment from a cross-disciplinary approach—both in the academy and more importantly still, in the world at large.

Insecticides, Human Environment, Hazards, Pesticides, DDT, Inhabitants

"Literature's Impact on Environmental Policy: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 4, page no.530-534, April-2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1904278.pdf

"Literature's Impact on Environmental Policy: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 4, page no. pp530-534, April-2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1904278.pdf