Health Risks in Perspective

When it comes to distinguishing real health risks from trivial or simply bogus risks, American consumers have a great deal to learn. In the media, the real and the hypothetical risks get blurred -- or worse, the non-risks get so hyped that they sound like major causes of preventable disease and death.

Take the current national obsession about the alleged risks of chemicals known as phthalates, used in manufacturing flexible plastics -- used in making products ranging from children's toys to medical devices. Some very vocal advocates, particularly in California, have convinced policy makers that phthalates are a major health threat to kids who play with rubber duckies and put them in their mouths. Indeed, California just passed a law to ban the use of phthalates in the manufacture of toys -- and Sen. Feinstein has introduced a similar bill that would ban these chemicals nation-wide.

The truth is that phthalates have no known adverse effects on health. Yet for parents hearing about these "toxins" and "carcinogens" in children's products, phthalates are perceived as a major risk. There is rarely attention given, though, to this type of question: where do phthalates stand when compared to other health risks?

One reason that health risks are not frequently compared to each other on a spectrum from hypothetical to real is that health advocacy organizations tend to be single-issue groups and do not even attempt to see the broader picture of what health risks Americans face and which ones are important, which ones not.

Given this gap in knowledge and perspective, the group I head, the American Council on Science and Health, has created a new Riskometer where you can interactively compare and contrast health risks. The site uses peer-reviewed, Centers for Disease Control-based data -- which already, alas, means the site is unique on the often rumor-based and superstition-driven Internet. Now you can find reliable comparisons, for example, of how many people die annually from cigarette smoking versus how many die from exposure to PCBs and/or arsenic in water, or the dry cleaning chemical PERC.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the new ACSH Riskometer is a virtual gold mine of information on relative health risks for a risk-obsessed population.

Dr. Elizabeth Whelan is president of the American Council on Science and Health, which created Riskometer.org.

Comments

[avicenna]

What a timely piece of misinformation - and at the very worst - purposefully deviant information. Having just finished reading: "The plasticizer butyl benzyl phthalate induces genomic changes in rat mammary gland after neonatal/prepubertal exposure" in this months issue of BMC Genomics (open access: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/8/453/abstract) and also being a researcher in endocrinology and immunology - I can very well testify that plasticizers are one of the very many endocrine disruptors that are produced by negligent industries. I will give them that they could plead ignorance when they first made the magic soft ever-lasting plastics and non-stick coatings - but it is another story to purposefully spin anti-knowledge propaganda and setting up pseudo-organizations with the the words "health" and "policy" in the title. It amounts to knowlingly harming millions of susceptible people. To give more credibility to Huffpost - this author should have a declaration statement of "conflict of interest" for the opinion provided.

[emerywood]

The Riskometer is a fountain of information on various causes of death from various diseases and agents. What it doesn't include is morbidity and disabilities resulting from exposures to various agents and diseases. For example, lead exposure is responsible for zero death but I wondered about disabilities and morbidities. The latter are important too from the standpoint of health and prevention.

[hudsonriver1]

Besides the tainted source, there are numerous problems with the data they've used. Studies on the hazardous effects of chemicals have been funded and produced by chemical industry-linked research institutions, and the research is skimpy and not peer-reviewed. More important, new research (reviewed in New Scientist magazine recently) shows that the effects of environmental chemicals have a synergistic effect when multiple exposures take place, as happens in real life. Therefore, the study of any one individual chemical's effects isn't truly representative of the effects on people who are exposed to many chemicals, day-in and day-out. There is good evidence that long-term effects on sexual development, cancer rates, developmental disabilities and other systemic problems are linked to chemical exposure, but research is underfunded because of industry pressure and pro-industry bias by Congressmen and Senators (who depend heavily on industry money for their campaigns.
This data is well-presented, but self-serving and deceptive (not to mention false and misleading). Don't be fooled!

[SamThornton]

There are a variety of reasons to evaluate this post with a high degree of skepticism.

The most basic reason, of course, is that one should always regard such cookie-cutter generalizations as that offered with suspicion. Things are seldom as simplistic as those who offer such information claim.

One should also consider the source.

The author of this post, the head of American Council on Science and Health, is a long-time special interest advocate who started her organization with funding from such extremist organizations as the Scaife Foundations and John M. Olin Foundation, according to the SourceWatch website (http://tinyurl.com/yz6vr5), later shifting to a combination of currently unnamed corporate and foundation donations.

The Capital Research Center, which describes itself as a conservative think tank whose mission is to do "opposition research" exposing the funding sources behind consumer, health and environmental groups, says that among those donating to the author's organization are:

* Abbott Laboratories
* Bristol-Myers Squibb
* Exxon Mobil
* McDonalds
* Chevron
* Eastman Kodak
* 3M
* DuPont