Section 17-5. Risk Perception
Risk analysis involves identifying hazards and evaluating their associated
risks (risk assessment), ranking risks (comparative risk analysis),
determining options and making decisions about reducing or eliminating
risks (risk management), and informing decision makers and the public
about risks (risk communication).
 The three greatest threats that humans face causing premature deaths
are the poverty/malnutrition/disease cycle, tobacco, and pneumonia
and flu.
 Poverty causes malnutrition, increased susceptibility to normally
nonfatal infectious diseases, and increased exposure to fatal infectious
diseases through contaminated drinking water.
 The WHO estimates that each year, tobacco contributes to the
premature deaths of at least 5.4 million people from 25 illnesses
including heart disease, lung cancer, other cancers, bronchitis,
emphysema, and stroke. Passive smoking, or breathing secondhand
smoke, also poses health hazards for children and adults. Children
who grow up with smokers are more likely to develop allergies and
asthma. Nonsmoking spouses of smokers have a 30% higher risk of
both heart attack and lung cancer than do spouses of non-smokers. In
2006, the CDC estimated that each year, secondhand smoke causes an
estimated 3,000 lung cancer deaths and 46,000 deaths from heart
disease in the United States. See CASE STUDY: Death from
Smoking.
 Suggestions to decrease smoking:
a. Adding a $ 3–5 federal tax to the price of a pack of cigarettes in
the United States
b. Classifying and regulating the use of nicotine as an addictive and
dangerous drug under the U. S. Food and Drug Administration
c. Eliminating all federal subsidies and tax breaks to tobacco farmers
and tobacco companies
d. Using cigarette tax revenues to finance an aggressive anti-tobacco
advertising and education program
e. Smoking bans
 In 2004, Ireland, Norway, and Scotland enacted bans on
smoking in all indoor workplaces, bars, and restaurants. And in
2004, India banned smoking in public places, as well as tobacco
advertising in the mass media and tobacco sales to minors.
 We can reduce the major risks we face by becoming informed,
thinking critically about risks, and making careful choices.
 Five factors can cause people to see a technology or a product as
being more or less risky than experts judge it to be: fear, degree of
control we have, whether a risk is catastrophic (not chronic), some
people suffer from optimism bias, and instant gratification.
 Some guidelines for evaluating and reducing risk:
a. Compare risks. Is there a risk of getting cancer by eating a
charcoal-broiled steak once or twice a week for a lifetime? Yes,
because almost any chemical can harm you if the dose is large
enough. The question is whether this danger is great enough for
you to worry about. In evaluating a risk, the key question is not “Is
it safe?” but rather “How risky is it compared to other risks?”
b. Determine how much risk you are willing to accept. For most
people, a 1 in 100,000 chance of dying or suffering serious harm
from exposure to an environmental hazard is a threshold for
changing their behavior. However, in establishing standards and
reducing risk, the U.S. EPA generally assumes that a 1 in 1 million
chance of dying from an environmental hazard is acceptable.
People involuntarily exposed to such risks believe that this
standard is too high.
c. Determine the actual risk involved. The news media usually
exaggerate the daily risks we face in order to capture our interest
and sell newspapers and magazines or gain television viewers. As
a result, most people believe that the world is much more riskfilled than it really is.
d. Concentrate on evaluating and carefully making important lifestyle
choices, and you will have a much greater chance of living a
longer, healthier, happier, and less fearful life.