What are we doing now?

In Rachel Carson's Silent Spring she talks a lot a bout pesticides and their effect on our world. Thinking about the readings we have done made me wonder what our rules and regulations are today. Carson talks a lot about the the terrible regulations which allowed the use of harmful pesticides in large ammounts. obviously today we know that this is harmful and we do not allow it. However I have no clue to what extent we control this. I have never researched it but it would be nice to know to just what extent does the government regulate the use of pesticides. Pesticides are stil used that why you should really watch fruits before eating them. But I would bet that many, like me, have no idea how much pesticide they use or how harmful it is today. I just assume It is okay. In addition, I never really questioned it. Im wondering if we really looked into it or if most people just do not question it. I would assume, based on the issues that occured with other pesticides like DDT, that we did the researching necessary to figure out whether or not it is actually semi-safe. I also wonder what the pesticides we use now do to the environment. The ones, such as DDT, that we used before would destroy parts of the environment. contaminating everything it was sprayed over. Rainwater runoff into the lakes would kill fish. Birds in the area where pesticides were used would often die as well. Horses drank from pesticide filled troughs and soon became ill and died. I wonder what they use to make the new substitutes less deadly. And even if they are less deadly could they still cause medical problems? Rachel Carson's book was made to get people thinking and thinking rationaly about the environment. If it is making me consider what we are doing than it must have really made people think when it was first published. This book definitely does its job and helps people with awareness. It is really cool to me how much there is to learn about this subject and definitely makes me want to do some research for myself