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Silent Spring is the title of a book written by Rachel Carson, an ecologist and natural historian, published in September 1962 by Houghton Mifflin Press. The book is widely acclaimed as being central among the factors that led to the generation of the new wave of environmental consciousness in the West in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The book contains extensive and graphic documentation of the negative effects of a range of human activities connected with industrialization on the environment. In particular, the book argued that there has been an accumulation of pesticides in the environment and that many dangerous chemicals have found their way into the human food chain. It also claimed that the pesticides were having far-reaching effects on birds. Carson indicated 23 substances belonging to the families of the organochlorine and organophosphate pesticide compounds, such as DDT, the use of which had become commonplace in intensive agriculture. The majority of these substances have since been banned in most industrialized countries. The book was on the top of New York’s bestseller list for a long time and has recently been named as one of the greatest science books of all times by the editors of Discovery Magazine.