Editorial Review:

The media constantly bombard us with news of health hazards lurking in our everyday lives. But many of these hazards turn out to have been greatly overblown. According to author and epidemiologist Geoffrey C. Kabat, this hyping of low-level environmental hazards leads to needless anxiety and confusion on the part of the public as to which exposures have important effects on health and which are likely to have minimal or no effect.

Kabat approaches health scares as "social facts" and shows that a variety of factors can contribute to the inflating of a hazard. These include skewed reporting by the media, but also, surprisingly, the actions of researchers who may emphasize certain findings while ignoring others, regulatory and health agencies eager to show their responsiveness to the health concerns of the public, politicians, and advocates with a stake in a particular outcome.

By means of four case studies, Kabat demonstrates how a powerful confluence of interests can lead to overstating or distorting the scientific evidence. He considers the health risks of pollutants such as DDT as a cause of breast cancer, electromagnetic fields from power lines, radon within residences, and secondhand tobacco smoke. Tracing the trajectory of each of these hazards from its initial emergence up to the present, Kabat shows how publication of more rigorous studies and critical assessments ultimately helped put the hazard in perspective.

Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

an honest epidemiologist:

In a dispassionate and painstaking way, Kabat sheds light on four health scares: radon, electromagnetic fields from power lines, DDT as a cause of breast cancer, and second-hand tobacco smoke. If epidemiologists are to contribute useful insights, they need to be mindful of weaknesses in evidence. Kabat quotes a distinguished pioneer of identifying risks associated with cigarettes, Sir Richard Peto: "epidemiology is so beautiful and provides such an important perspective on human life and death, but an... more info

Truthful epidemiology is not always politically correct:

Kabat's book should be required reading for all public health graduate students and single-issue health activists. From the office of the Surgeon General to city hall, advocacy has frequently supplanted sound science in the service of "good public health policy". The hallmark of advocacy triumphing over science is a selective and result oriented use of data, starting with the institutions that fund the studies. It is currently heresy to challenge the science behind ETS research and regulation. You cannot... more info

Artificial Hyping of Risks:

Professor Kabat does an excellent job in describing how a combination of zealous regulators, activists, and media can combine to magnify "alarming" results of preliminary, usually inadequate or poorly done studies. Once these headlines are in the public psyche, it can take years, even decades, of further, expensive studies to demonstrate the early alarms were false. Meanwhile, many are scared, and billions of dollars are spent to "fix" or "avoid" the so-called problem.
Four examples are explored in... more info

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