For all the benefits modern society provides, not least of which are vast improvements in public health and longevity, our advanced post-industrial technological/information age also produces risks, far too many for you and me to keep track of. We depend in part on watchdogs and advocacy groups to uncover these dangers and sound the alarm. But therein may lie one of the larger, and least realized, risks of all. In their passion to sound the alarm dramatically enough to attract the attention of the media and the policymakers, these watchdogs and advocates are contributing to excessive fear that does more harm to our health than whatever it is they're trying to protect us from... real harm, from the stress we experience when we are afraid. Alarmism from a long list of advocacy groups has indeed made this an excessively worried, and stressed out, world.
The current example is the excessive alarm raised by The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics about the presence of a chemical linked to cancer in a popular baby shampoo. OMG! CANCER! AAAIIIGHH! Never mind that the level of the chemical, a preservative, is so low that the risk is tiny, if indeed there is any risk at all, a vital qualification nowhere to be found in the group's frighteningly titled report "Baby's Tub Is Still Toxic":
Quaternium-15 releases formaldehyde into cosmetics products. Formaldehyde is classified as a known human carcinogen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The National Cancer Institute, the World Health Organization and the National Toxicology Program have all identified a possible link between formaldehyde exposure and leukemia.
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics tells us nothing about one of the most important elements of risk... what dose causes what level of risk (the risk from infinitesimally small doses like this is usually infinitesimal or non-existent). They don't explain another key risk factor... what period of exposure causes what level of risk (it usually takes repeated exposures to a carcinogen over time, not just once or a few times, to raise the risk). They alarmingly tell us that the National Cancer Institute links formaldehyde with leukemia, but selectively omit well-established reassuring science about this risk that the NCI clearly states on its formaldehyde web page:
"In 1987, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classified formaldehyde as a probable human carcinogen under conditions of unusually high or prolonged exposure."
That hardly describes washing your baby's hair a couple times a week. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics operates in the name of public health, but they fail to tell us the basics of what we need to know so we can make informed judgments about our health.
But of course such groups aren't out there to inform us about risks as much as to sound the alarm, loudly, and warnings that include caveats don't scare people as much, don't generate as much dramatic news coverage ("Group Says Carcinogens Exist in Popular Baby Shampoo," "Popular baby shampoo still contains carcinogens" and "Are baby shampoos poisoning infants?") and don't create the same pressures on government and companies, the way a more dramatic warning like "TOXIC TUB!" does. (And of course information that puts the risk in a less-frightening light calls into question the very need for the watchdog to exist.)
So in the name of protecting the public, and self-perpetuation, many advocacy groups go over the top with their alarms, leaving out information that might help us put the risk in perspective... and making us more afraid than the evidence warrants. And that is definitely bad for our health.
I found out about this shampoo issue when a Facebook friend of my wife posted her fears, "Been sick to my stomach about this all day. We've been bathing Sylvia in a carcinogen for the past 14 months. F%$* you, (shampoo company)." Note the "sick to my stomach" part. That's not just a figure of speech. Stress -- the biological name for worry -- is bad for us in all sorts of ways. Chronic stress that lasts more than a couple weeks:
-- Raises our blood pressure and contributes to cardiovascular disease.
-- Depresses our immune system and raises the frequency and severity of infectious disease.
There is even strong evidence suggesting that stress impairs our ability to defend ourselves against or recover from cancer. (Here's what the National Cancer Institute says about that.)
That's right. Excessive worry about carcinogens that aren't very likely to cause cancer may contribute to more cancer cases, and deaths, than the carcinogen itself! (Please take note of this, any advocacy group that over-alarms about a possible carcinogen. YOU may be the greater risk!)
-- Impairs memory, growth, fertility.
-- Exacerbates digestive problems like ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome.
-- Increases the likelihood of clinical depression and Type 2 diabetes.
(For much richer and more entertaining detail on the health effects of stress, read Robert Sapolsky's classic "Why Zebra's Don't Get Ulcers." You'll laugh and learn.)
Frightened, worried, scared, concerned. Whatever word you want to use, biologically it equates to stress. Which would be pretty minor if it were just this one case. But of course what the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics has done is just one tiny example of a pervasive trend in our modern worried world. Add this frightening alert to so many dramatized warnings about carcinogens, and to the hundreds of "Be afraid. Be VERY afraid!" excessive alerts about dozens of chemicals, and the endless excessive alerts about any kind of radiation, and about genetically modified food, and on and on.
And those are just the environmental bogeymen. Throw in excessive alarms about child abduction, and terrorism, and vaccines, all magnified in the 24/7 "He Who Screams Loudest Wins" new media age, and you have the insidious gnawing constant undercurrent of stress captured in political scientist Aaron Wildavsky's observation in 1979, "How extraordinary! The richest, longest lived, best protected, most resourceful civilization, with the highest degree of insight into its own technology, is on its way to becoming the most frightened."
Watchdogs are necessary. Alerts are good. And many of the risks we are alerted to are real, or at least the evidence is strong enough that they might be real and we should take note. But over-the-top alarmism to advance an agenda that dramatizes the peril at the expense of a fair assessment of the actual danger is dangerous all by itself. So for all those dedicated and passionate people who say they want to help keep us safe, if you are really honest about wanting to protect public health, here's a warning to put on the wall in your office:
WARNING! THE WAY YOU WARN PEOPLE ABOUT THREATS TO THEIR HEALTH, POSES A THREAT TO THEIR HEALTH.
Follow David Ropeik on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dropeik
No one can predict who is going get cancer.
Though we do know that one out of two men and one out of three women will hear they too have cancer.
Cancer is not supposed to be an expected stage of life.
In the United States, exposure to a wide variety of natural and manufactured substances in the environment accounts for at least two-thirds all cancer cases.
But lets not lose sight of the headline this is all about precaution not panic.
No one wants to keep a chemical that evidence based science shows to cause harm or more specifically cancer in laboratory studies- in personal care products.
And we certainly don't want those exposures for children.
It is important to remember that children are not small adults, rather they are a developing version of an adult. Simply put, children are under construction.They are unfinished and their developing systems are quite fragile. We know, for instance, that in children the brain continues to develop into their twenties, and this makes their brains potentially more vulnerable to toxins. They also breathe much more rapidly, so they take in more toxins through their lungs.
We have lots of smarter choices we can make to improve the environment and human health and while some of these choices may not seem important today for adults -it means everything to the next generation.
Bill Couzens Founder Less Cancer
I am surrounded by Campaign for Safe Cosmetic supporters in my life, and no one runs around yelling the sky is falling. The only place I see this reaction is in media articles, not in the real world of intelligent women who want to choose wiser about what products they will and wont bring into their home.
Also, which sounds worse: Getting sick or polluting the earth by using an unsafe product; or Stressing out about whether a product is unsafe and then using safe alternatives, therefore removing stress? I'm going with the second option.