Risk Assessment
Risk is a relative thing. It seems that common risks, however
deadly—like absorbing vast amounts of cancer-causing solar radiation by
sunbathing—don’t worry us. But mysterious, unseen risks, however
remote—like the risk of receiving radiation from a nuclear power plant
accident—make us fearful.
Furniture can be dangerous. Bunk beds rank among the most dangerous
products, based on emergency-room admissions compiled by the Consumer
Product Safety Commission. Stairs are notoriously deadly. Deaths from
falls far outnumber deaths from fires.
Few of us stress over being killed by an airplane falling from the
sky. Such an event is so rare—four in one million—that taking
precautions against it would border on lunacy. Yet federal standards
require that the lifetime risk of dying from toxic air emissions be one
in one million, or four times lower.
In our own lives, we take much greater risks.
Three out of 10 people do not wear seat belts, according to the
National Safety Council. Government flammability standards for
children's clothing costs $1.5 million annually per life saved, while a
third of those children live in homes without inexpensive smoke alarms.
We install backyard swimming pools, even though 350 children die from
drowning in a pool each year.
We eat ourselves to epidemic levels of obesity, so that 61 percent of
us are overweight and 27 percent are obese. Obesity is a leading cause
of diabetes and heart disease, and it has doubled among children since
1980 while under their parents' watchful eyes.
Nearly 6,000 pedestrians are killed each year by cars. We drive to
the airport and worry about our plane crashing, when driving is six
times more deadly than flying. Arsenic is a naturally occurring,
poisonous element that enters drinking water as it is dissolved from
weathered rocks and soil. High exposures are linked to cancer. Arsenic
is also considered beneficial in trace amounts, and is an ingredient in
some dietary mineral supplements.
President Bush's decision not to lower the arsenic standard in public
water systems is considered one of the worst blunders of his
administration. The Natural Resources Defense Council says the current
standard for arsenic poses an unacceptable cancer risk, defined as
posing a lifetime risk of dying from cancer at more than one in 10,000.
Economist Robert Hahn calculated that lowering the standard would save
10 lives a year, at a net cost of $190 million.
Every week, 20 people on average are murdered on the job, says the
National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety. Taxi drivers top
the list, but there is no public outcry to save their lives. Working as
a retail sales counter clerk is nearly three times more deadly than
being a firefighter.
Risk Assessment
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