Here's a quiz based on the material in the book.
1. In an effort to develop the new and prosperous land of America, some of the choices early settlers made brought an unprecedented amount of insect infestation. Which of these circumstances did not lead to a drastic increase in the population of pests?
(a) Deforestation
(b) A tendency to position crops in a manner that did not permit variation per acre
(c) Planting crops in close proximity to woods and forests
(d) Grazing cattle, which brought about alterations in the consistency of soil
Answer
2. For preindustrial farmers, which was not a common method of obtaining information about insects and infestation solutions?
(a) Offering a town prize for whoever could produce the most informative essay on insects
(b) Word of mouth among neighbors
(c) Reading articles from the scholarly agricultural press
(d) Reading articles written by ordinary farmers about trial-and-error solutions
Answer
3. Which was a common tactic for fighting infestations on crops during preindustrial times?
(a) Sending slaves to remove insects by hand
(b) Luring the insects away by placing animal carcasses nearby
(c) Sifting lead over each crop
(d) Introducing domesticated cats to the crop region
Answer
4. Which major event was most responsible for glorifying the use of insecticides and bringing unprecedented fame and power to their use?
(a) Civil War
(b) World War I
(c) World War II
(d) Cold War
Answer
5. Which was not one of the many claims that advocates of insecticides endorsed in an effort to convince the American public that arsenic and lead were safe to spray on produce?
(a) They insisted that people would have to eat seventy-four apples before they would feel the effect of the poison.
(b) They demonstrated that arsenic did not infiltrate the fruit; it only coated it and thus could be washed off with water.
(c) They funded scientific experiments that tested a large number of people and the long-term effects of insecticide ingestion.
(d) The government passed laws to protect consumers from dangerous insecticides.
Answer
6. During the first half of the twentieth century, there was still little opposition to the use of insecticides despite increasing consumer knowledge of the hazardous effects. What was a major reason for this?
(a) Humans did not seem to be affected by the use of the toxins.
(b) The government and scientific community supported the use of insecticides.
(c) When pesticides first arrived, there was a strong reaction, but after time the hysteria died down.
(d) Pesticides were not yet widely used by farmers.
Answer
7. Which breakthrough pesticide was widely viewed as a public health panacea upon its release?
(a) DDT
(b) Paris green
(c) London purple
(d) Kerosene emulsion
Answer
8. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which of the following insects was not regarded as one of the “major insect pests” in the United States?
(a) Chinch bug
(b) Hessian fly
(c) Japanese beetle
(d) San Jose scale
Answer
9. Which repercussion is not linked to insecticides?
(a) Human birth defects
(b) Wildlife endangerment
(c) Cancer in humans
(d) Blindness in humans
Answer
10. Which publication, ranked as one of the most important works ever published by an American author, sparked the modern environmental movement in the United States?
(a) Silent Spring
(b) Report of the Insects of Massachusetts Injurious to Vegetation
(c) American Chamber of Horrors
(d) Fighting the Insects
Answer
ANSWERS
1. (c) The insect paradox occurs as a result of deforestation, an addiction to monoculture, grazing cattle, and other disturbances of the natural ecology. Although in earlier times some believed that forests produced the menacing vermin, it is now known that destroying natural woods and forests and replacing them with fields of new and sometimes imported crops leads to the substantial proliferation of insects.
2.(c) The first scholarly articles written about combating insect -pests were not seen in America until the 1850s. Before the mid-nineteenth century, published work was often contradictory, disorganized, decentralized, and experimental.
3. (a) Before the Civil War, eradicating insects by hand was a common method of extermination. Other methods included luring the insects away by using lit hay, sifting bitter plants such as hops over the crops, and introducing domesticated birds and turkeys to serve as natural predators.
4. (b) World War I was a turning point in the history of public promotion and use of insecticides. The unique requirements of Allied soldiers fighting for the first time in a trench war created a sense of urgent need for chemical insecticides. The war effort also required the short-term protection of crops. With backing by the powerful government bureaus and “men of science,” insecticides saturated the World War I war effort.
5. (c) Much of the debate about the toxicity of insecticides has been conducted with neither side backing its arguments with scientific experimentation.
6. (b) Without concrete and incontrovertible medical evidence, advocates of the use of chemical insecticides ignored the issue of the safety of insecticides. The fact was that insecticides had arrived on the market with minimal opposition, had achieved a strong foothold in the agricultural business, had won scientific and government backing, and had become standardized before serious opposition developed.
7. (a) The advent of DDT was seen by many as miraculous because it saved millions of lives worldwide by protecting much of the world’s population from malaria, typhoid fever, filariasis, denge, and yellow fever while successfully exterminating insidious insects from crops.
8. (c) The Japanese beetle was known to persistently plague farmers after its introduction into the United States in 1916. It was not, however, considered one of the longtime pests that caused alarming amounts of harm both before and after the advent of chemical insecticides. The most notable “major pests” were the chinch bug, Hessian fly, San Jose scale, grasshopper, Colorado potato beetle, gypsy moth, boll weevil, and locust.
9. (d) Death, cancer, nervous ailments (difficult to diagnose), birth defects, weight loss, joint pain, anemia, paralysis, and constipation are just some of the many consequences linked to the human consumption of insecticide residue. Blindness in humans has not yet been substantially linked.
10. (a) Silent Spring, written by Rachel Carson and published in 1962, was the first book of great magnitude to ignite intellectual interest in the study of ecology. Carson stirred the emotions of the general public by humanizing the effects of insecticides on our ecosystem in a manner that has been compared with that of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Choices b, c, and d are each influential entomological publications that failed to elicit mass public appeal.