How a toxic spill and a book launched Britain’s environmental movement

Today we take for granted an awareness of environmental matters, but this was not always the case. It could be said that in Britain there was a moment when that environmental consciousness arrived. When in 1963 some farm animals in the parish郡以下的行政区of Smarden in Kent became sick and died, suspicions fell on a nearby pesticide factory run by a division of Rentokil Laboratories. The events that followed amounted to one of the first environmental scandals in contemporary British history – one that would galvanise刺激某人行动起来the environmental movement. 如今我们认为保护环境天经地义，但情况并非向来如此。说到英国环保意识的产生，不能不提1963年的能多洁事件。当时，肯特郡斯马尔登村的一些牲畜生病死亡，附近能多洁公司的一家杀虫剂工厂被列为怀疑对象。这引发了英国现代历史上最早的环境丑闻之一，环境保护运动也由此起步。

It became clear that the factory, a large shed库 in the middle of farmland, was manufacturing toxic chemicals and that a leak of one of these, fluoroacetamide, led to Britain’s first documented livestock mass poisoning. The incident might have passed by as only a historical footnote, but instead the Smarden leak quickly became a national concern with international implications, and has cast a long shadow across the approach to intensive agriculture in the UK in the years since.人们最终发现坐落在农田中的大型工厂制造的是有毒化学品，其泄漏的氟乙酰胺导致了英国第一次有记录的大规模牲畜中毒事件。这一事件本来也可能悄无声息地过去，只是成为历史的一个注脚，但斯马尔登泄漏迅速引起国内外关注，并对之后整个英国集约化的农业生产方式产生深远影响 。

Part of why this incident had such major repercussions is due to timing, coming as it did at the same time as American writer Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was first published in the UK. Seen as the first polemic of the environmental movement, Carson’s book was a significant catalyst to the emergence of modern environmentalism on both sides of the Atlantic.这一事件之所以造成巨大反响，部分原因在于当时恰逢美国作家蕾切尔·卡逊的《 寂静的春天》在英国首次出版。这本书引发了关于环境运动的首次争论，成为大西洋两岸现代环保主义诞生的重要催化剂。

An ecological narrative arrives

英格兰的寂静春天

Local veterinarian Douglas Good had unique knowledge of fluoride poisoning having worked with a leading expert in South Africa and on cases of animals affected by industrial fluoride poisoning in England. Taking hiscue from Carson, Good disseminated散步传播what he called a “short story” about the incident to the press, putting across the Smarden incident as not simply a local industrial waste spill, but as deadly evidence of the pervasiveness of toxic pesticides in the environment. Acknowledging his inspiration, Good concluded his narrative by declaring that the “subject of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring had become a reality here in the heart of the Garden of England”.当地兽医道格拉斯·古德致力于英国牲畜工业氟化物中毒案例研究，并曾经在南非与一位顶尖专家共事，因而对氟化物中毒有独到的认识。受到卡逊的启发，古德并未将斯马尔登事件视为一个单纯的地方上的工业废料泄漏事故，而是把它看作有毒杀虫剂在环境中无处不在的铁证。他将这一见解写成文章发给媒体。古德对自己所受的启发并不避讳，在文章的一开头就说：“卡逊在《寂静的春天》中所描述的，在有着英格兰花园之称的肯特郡成为现实。”

The media placed the Smarden incident within a Carson-inspired ecological critique of the dangers of an intensive, industrial approach to agriculture. Good, like Carson, was a trained scientist. Like her, he raised concerns about technocracy – governmental administration underpinned by scientific and technological expertise. As the Smarden incident unfolded, it highlighted the risks and hazards which accompanied the government’s commitment to industrial development. Tensions arose between veterinarians, government scientists, local government, media, and business interests.斯马尔登事件很快被媒体塑造成受卡逊启发的关于集约化工业式农业危险的批判 。和卡逊一样，古德也是一位训练有素的科学家。他也和卡逊一样对技术官僚（即科技专家主宰政府管理）满怀忧虑。随着斯马尔登事件的发酵，政府对工业发展的推动带来的风险和威胁也凸显出来，兽医、政府系科学家、地方政府、媒体和商业利益之间关系日趋紧张。

A chemical double agent

化学战在农田继续

While the use of inorganic poisons as pesticides stretches back to antiquity, large-scale use of organic pesticides is a 20th-century phenomenon. Fluoroacetamide is a toxic organic pesticide with nefarious origins.尽管无机毒物作为杀虫剂的历史可以追溯到遥远的古代，但人类大规模使用有机杀虫剂还是二十世纪的事，氟乙酰胺就是一种源自的化学武器研究的有毒有机杀虫剂。

The two world wars fostered a massive growth of the chemical industry, and fluoroacetamide was a pesticide that arose from the search for lethal chemical weapons. After the war it was approved for use as a poison for use against rodents and insects – it was not uncommon for the science, technology, institutions, and language of chemical warfare to be redirected to the problem of agricultural pest control during peacetime. But by the time of the Smarden incident in the early 1960s, the origin of these chemicals was seen as damning evidence of the perniciousness of the military-industrial complex and its impact on the environment. 两次世界大战使得化学工业获得巨大发展，氟乙酰胺就是一种在致命化学武器研究过程中产生的杀虫剂。战后，它被允许用来对付啮齿类动物和昆虫。实际上，在和平时期，创造出化学武器的科学、技术、体制和话语往往被挪用于对付农业害虫。但到斯马尔登事件在六十年代初发生时，人们终于对农药与化学武器的渊源以及军工产业的恶劣环境影响幡然醒悟。

Another case of fluoroacetamide poisonings, in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, came to light in September 1963, in which contaminated pet food resulted in the death of 75 to 100 dogs and cats – effectively shifting fears from remote farmers’ fields into people’s homes. When the cows, dogs and guinea pigs used as subjects to test the extent of the environmental damage died, those fears grew. 另一个氟乙酰胺中毒案例1963年9月发生在威尔士的梅瑟蒂德菲尔，共有75到100只猫和狗因食用被污染的宠物食品丧命。从偏僻的农场到人们的家中，恐惧一点点逼近。当用来检测环境破坏程度的牛、狗和豚鼠纷纷死掉时，这个恐惧更加强烈。

The government was consistently reluctant to inform the public about the strong circumstantial evidence of fluoroactemide poisoning. Declaring it a one-off industrial accident, the government avoided discussion of the actual widespread use of these chemicals as pesticides. But the death of further animals and a suspected case of human poisoning forced the government’s hand: on February 7, 1964, fluoroacetamide was banned as an insecticide. The government announced that 1,800 tonnes of polluted soil from the factory site would be removed and dumped at sea. Even so, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food did not permit farmers to use land around the site of the spill until March 1965, when government scientists found no traces of fluoroacetamide.政府一直不愿意向公众披露氟乙酰胺中毒的详细证据，一方面宣称其为一次偶发的工业事故，另一方面对这些化学品作为杀虫剂广泛使用的事实避而不谈。但更多的牲畜死亡以及一起疑似的人身中毒事件迫使政府不得不采取措施，于1964年2月7日颁布禁令，禁止将氟乙酰氨作为杀虫剂使用。政府宣布将位于斯马尔登的农药厂所在地1800吨被污染的土壤清除并倾倒入海。即便如此，英国农业、渔业及食品部（2001年改为环境、食品和农村事务部）仍然禁止农民使用工厂附近的土地，直到1965年3月政府科学家再也检验不到氟乙酰胺的痕迹。

A persistent memory

挥之不去的记忆

Much like persistent pesticides, the Smarden incident lingered in people’s memories as a cautionary tale about science, government, and the industrialisation of agriculture. These memories resurfaced when in 1985 farmers at Smarden discovered the first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Kent and a number of further cases followed. Twelve years later, a perceived cluster of cases of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) in the Smarden area led to speculation that this human form of BSE was caused by excessive exposure to pesticides.  和残留性农药相似，斯马尔登事件作为一个关于科学、政府和农业工业化的警示故事，也在人们的记忆中挥之不去。1985年这份记忆在斯马尔登重新出现，肯特郡出现了第一例牛海绵状脑病 （BSE，疯牛病），随后出现了更多病例。十二年后，斯马尔登地区又发生了一连串被认定的新变异型克雅病 (vCJD)，这令人们怀疑过多接触杀虫剂可引发人类感染的疯牛病。

Reports in the press suggested that the residents of Smarden suspected the incident had been some sort of government-controlled experiment and subsequent cover-up which had produced BSE. While vCJD was subsequently tied to the practice of feeding cows meal containing infected cows’ meat, bone and brain matter, these environmental controversies ultimately made disputes among experts publicly visible, and this caused a significant change in the public’s perceptions of science.据媒体报道，斯马尔登居民怀疑是政府控制的试验失败及其掩饰行为导致了疯牛病。尽管随后出现的证据显示变异型克雅病与牛饲料中添加感染牛只的肉、骨和脑组织有关，这些争议还是将科学家间的论争曝露于公众视野，并引发了公众科学观念的巨大变化。

Smarden and its legacy drove the emergence of modern environmentalism in Britain, through a confluence of a concern for public health and animal welfare, the desire to conserve the countryside, and an emergent ecological approach – such as advanced by the Soil Association, founded in 1946. It also revealed the tension caused by conflicts between what we would now call environmentalism and scientific expertise in a modern world that now routinely deploys施展 potentially life and planet-threatening technology. New activist movements have helped make contested expertise publicly visible, and this has contributed to an erosion of trust in traditional professions and in public authorities.斯马尔登事件影响深远，它触发了对公共健康和动物福利的关切，对保护乡村的强烈愿望，以及土壤协会（成立于1946年）等团体推广的顺其自然的生态方式，从而推动了英国现代环保主义的产生。这一事件也展示出我们如今所说的环保主义与科学专业知识之间的冲突和张力，让人们看见现代社会仰赖的技术可以对生命和地球造成什么样的威胁。此后，更加激进的环境保护运动将科学届的内部矛盾公之于众，也削弱了人们对于传统专业和权威人士的信任。