[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 52 (Wednesday, May 4, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 4, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 PSYCHO-FACTS ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL RISK

  Mr. JOHNSTON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
attached article from the opinion page of this morning's Washington 
Post be included in the Record following these remarks. It is entitled 
``The Triumph of the Psycho-Fact,'' by Robert J. Samuelson.
  I strongly recommend that my colleagues take the time to read this 
piece because it directly relates to the risk assessment and cost-
benefit amendment that I plan to offer when the Safe Drinking Water 
bill reaches the floor. Mr. Samuelson tells of how we are hounded about 
psycho-facts that create fears about rising crime, increasing health 
hazards, falling living standards, and a worsening environment, that 
are not supported by hard evidence.
  As many of you know, one of the purposes of my amendment is to get 
the facts out about the environmental risks that we face, and to put 
those risks in perspective. And that means comparing the risks that EPA 
regulates to other risks that we face in our daily lives. Mr. Samuelson 
speaks eloquently to that same point, and includes a table showing the 
likelihood of dying from a variety of risks. I am confident that my 
colleagues will find his piece informative.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       We live in a world of real dangers and imagined fears. The 
     dangers are often low and falling, while the fears are high 
     and rising. We are hounded by what I call ``psycho-facts'': 
     beliefs that, though not supported by hard evidence, are 
     taken as real because their constant repetition changes the 
     way we experience life. We feel assaulted by rising crime, 
     increasing health hazards, falling living standards and a 
     worsening environment. These are all psycho-facts. The 
     underlying conditions aren't true, but we feel they are and, 
     therefore, they become so.
       Journalists--trafficking in the sensational and the 
     simplistic--are heavily implicated in the explosion of 
     psycho-facts. But so are politicians, policy advocates and 
     promoters of various causes and lifestyles. Rarely does any 
     of us deliberately lie. However, we do peddle incomplete or 
     selective information that inspires misleading exaggerations 
     or unwarranted inferences. People begin to feel that 
     something's wrong, and this new sensation becomes an 
     irrefutable fact or (worse) the basis for a misguided policy.
       Crime? Yes, there's long been too much of it. But the best 
     surveys do not show that it's dramatically worsened. Indeed, 
     some victimization rates have dropped. The household-burglary 
     rate declined by 42 percent between 1973 and 1991. The number 
     of annual murders has fluctuated between 20,000 and 26,000 
     since 1980; the major increase occurred in the 1960s, when 
     the number doubled. A Gallup poll reports that 86 percent of 
     the respondents haven't been victims of violent crime. By 
     contrast, our consciousness of crime--fanned by local TV 
     news--has risen.
       ``Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?'' asks ABC 
     correspondent John Stossel on a recent network special 
     exploring these issues. The answer is yes. But psycho-facts 
     are seductive precisely because they are often plausible. 
     We've been told for years, for example, that our living 
     standards are dropping, and this became a big Clinton theme 
     in 1992. It isn't really so. Over any extended period, our 
     living standards have risen. In the past 25 years, median 
     family income is up by about one-fifth. But the rise is much 
     slower than we expected and so slow that it's often 
     imperceptible or nonexistent in any one year. We don't feel 
     it.
       Health, safety and environmental hazards inspire similar 
     misconceptions. Suppose an experiment shows that substance X 
     causes cancer--at some dosage in some animal. We're soon 
     worried that everything we eat or breathe is giving us cancer 
     or heart disease. We feel that identifiable risks should be 
     avoidable risks. We act as if there's a constitutional right 
     to immortality and that anything that raises risk should be 
     outlawed. Our goal is a risk-free society, and this fosters 
     many outsize fears.
       Lots of theoretical dangers (like asbestos or plane 
     crashes) aren't large practical dangers. The easiest way to 
     grasp this is to glance at the adjoining table. It compares 
     relative risks of dying. What's worth remembering is that 
     roughly 2.2 million Americans die every year. With about 260 
     million Americans, this means that in a crude arithmetic 
     sense the average risk of dying is about 1 in 118 (2.2 
     million goes into 260 million 118 times). Now obviously, the 
     old die in much greater numbers than the young. Still, the 
     general risk of dying from natural causes or unavoidable 
     accidents is much greater than the specific dangers of many 
     hazardous substances or jobs. (The table shows both.)
       Alarmists will point out that all the specific risks of 
     dying create the overall risk of dying. True. But no matter 
     how much we reduce any specific risk, we'll still die from 
     something, and many specific risks aren't very threatening. 
     In the ABC program, Stossel tweaks Ralph Nader for seeing 
     danger almost everywhere: hot dogs have too much 
     fat; airplanes aren't adequately maintained; coffee has 
     caffeine; rugs collect dust and cause indoor pollution. 
     ``Life is preparedness--the old Boy Scout motto, be 
     prepared,'' Nader says. The trouble is that if you spend 
     all your life preparing, you may miss out on living.
       Of course, we should take sensible personal precautions and 
     enact prudent safety and environmental regulations. But they 
     should be sensible and prudent. We should not overreact to 
     every ghoulish incident or conceivable danger. The abduction 
     and murder of Polly Klaas late last year was horrifying, but 
     so was the kidnapping of the Lindbergh child in 1932. 
     Cloistering children in generally safe neighborhoods is not a 
     sensible reaction. The old, too, often senselessly barricade 
     themselves indoors against imagined crime. We ``give up some 
     freedom,'' as Stossel says.
       Likewise, misguided regulations based on exaggerated risk 
     can waste lots of money. The asbestos panic was a costly 
     mistake, as federal Judge Stephen Breyer shows in a new book, 
     ``Breaking the Vicious Circle: Toward Effective Risk 
     Regulation.'' Leaving asbestos in buildings poses almost no 
     hazard; removing it increases the danger by putting asbestos 
     particles into the air. Breyer cites a toxic-waste case in 
     which the company objected to the final cleanup. The site was 
     already so clean that children could eat some dirt 70 days a 
     year without significant harm. Why do more? ``There were no 
     dirt-eating children playing in the area,'' he writes, ``for 
     it was a swamp.''
       The standard retort is: A rich country like ours can afford 
     absolute safety. No we can't. Regulatory costs raise prices 
     or taxes. Our incomes are lower than they might be. That's 
     okay if we receive lots of benefits--much cleaner air or 
     healthier food. But it's not okay if the benefits are trivial 
     or nonexistent.
       Good judgment requires good information. Every imagined 
     danger or adverse social trend is not as ghastly as it seems. 
     Consciousness-raising be truth-lowering. We fall prey to our 
     fears and fantasies. We create synthetic truths from a blend 
     of genuine evidence, popular prejudice and mass anxiety. 
     Psycho-facts are not real facts. We should try to tell the 
     difference.


                           The Odds of Dying

       Every year, nearly 1 in 100 of us dies. The dangers from 
     high-profile risks such as asbestos and plane crashes are 
     relatively small.
       For everyone--1 in 118.
       For those 35 to 44 years old--1 in 437.
       For police on the job--1 in 4,500.
       For women giving birth--1 in 9,100.
       From airplane crashes--1 in 167,000.
       From lightning--1 in 2 million.
       From asbestos in schools--1 in 11 million.

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