By Cheryl Lo In the years following World War II, a chemical hailed as a miracle began to spread across the American landscape. DDT was everywhere. It was sprayed across farmland and forests, and even over suburban neighborhoods, often released from planes that covered entire areas in a fine chemical mist. To many, it represented progress: science’s ability to control nature and eliminate threats that had once seemed unavoidable. At first, it seemed almost too simple. A single chemical appeared capable of solving problems that had long resisted control. That sense of certainty, however, did not last for long. Rachel Carson, a marine biologist whose writing fundamentally changed how people understood the natural world, was among the first to question the consequences of this widespread chemical use. By the late 1950s, tens of millions of pounds of DDT were being sprayed each year across the United States, under the assumption that these landscapes could absorb repeated exposure without ...