VIEWING GUIDE: IDENTIFYING ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
 While watching the American Experience segment, “Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,” and using your knowledge of the text, note
answers to these questions:
1.
What are the benefits and risks associated with the use of DDT?
2. Why was the broad use of DDT accepted by society in the 1950s? Who benefited from the use of DDT in large quantities? Why do you think Rachel
Carson's message was not well received by some people at the time her book appeared?
3. Poisons have three ways of entering the human body: through the lungs by breathing, through the skin by absorption, and through the digestive tract by
eating. Knowing this, what is your reaction to some of the scenes you saw in the video?
4. Discuss Rachel Carson's thematic message that humans have "a fundamental right to a healthy environment."