[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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