The possible dangers of chromium in the water supply, mercury in the fish we eat, controversy over genetically modified foods, and even worries about the adverse health effects of using mobile phones—all stories that involve the reporting of risks.

Because these scientific topics resonate so strongly with the public, journalists and other communicators who can adequately explain the risk aspect of these issues play an important role. With more and more people relying upon the mainstream news media for information on health risks for their families, science and environmental journalists face a daunting task—not only to report on recent studies, but to dig deeper and provide context so readers can understand the big picture.

Providing reliable and sound information to the public regarding health or environmental risks is the number one priority for award-winning environmental journalists like Marla Cone, a Los Angeles Times reporter who has covered the environmental beat for more than 20 years, Ilsa Setziol, environmental correspondent with National Public Radio, and John Krist, senior environmental reporter and columnist for the Ventura County Star, where he has worked for two decades.

"The public has a right to know about a health or environmental risk," Setziol said. "But it is also very important to temper stories to avoid unwarranted public panic. Sometimes my sources differ on what constitutes a genuine risk. It is part of my job to decide what merits attention."

Krist agrees. "Unfortunately, it is rare to find incontrovertible, unequivocal proof that something is bad for you, or at least bad enough that you should alter your behavior to avoid it. The world is messy and biological systems are astonishingly complex.
Science almost never provides us certainty," he continued. "It just gives us the best explanation at any given time."

For these writers, communicating risk, particularly risk to human health, is the hardest part of the beat. "People understand risk when it comes to the stock market, but it is harder to understand when it is your health or safety," Cone said.

The measurement of risk by scientists is a complex statistical process that often produces results that—out of context—can be meaningless to the average person. What does it mean, for example, when the Center for Disease Control says that we have a one in 397 chance of dying from heart disease this year? Or a one in 56,424,800 chance of dying from bioterrorism?

"The first challenge for anyone trying to communicate risk is to accurately describe what risk is," said David Ropeik, director of risk communication for the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. "Most people assume it is just statistics, but we have to think about risk more broadly."

Risk, according to Ropeik, whose book entitled "Risk: A Practical Guide for Deciding What is Really Safe and What is Really Dangerous in the World Around You" will be published in October by Houghton Mifflin, is the calculation of probability that exposure to a hazard will result in negative consequences. If you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day for 20 years, you have a good chance of developing lung cancer. If you live in Kansas City, you have a low risk of being bitten by a shark.

The challenge, according to Ropeik, is that humans don't respond to risk based on the facts, and in most cases, we don't have all the data to begin with. "Evolution has taught us to protect ourselves immediately, before we have all the facts," he said. "We are biologically hard-wired to fear first and think second."

This instinctual reaction of fear that drives our first response to a risk makes it difficult for risk communicators who must try to convince members of the public that their first reaction of fear may not have been the right one.

In addition to trying to persuade someone to change their perception and overcome that initial fear, risk communicators also must battle a myriad of psychological factors that play an important role in how people view risk.

Thirty years of research in the field of psychology have yielded a body of knowledge about how humans perceive risk. A species-wide pattern of fear means that most people around the world fear the same things for the same reasons. And often these fears don't match the facts.

People are always afraid of a risk when it first pops up, according to Ropeik, and less afraid after it has been around a while. Remember fears about radiation from microwave ovens?

"We are also always more afraid of an imposed risk than one we choose," he continued. For example, the dangers of radon gas seeping into homes, potentially causing lung cancer, pose a very scary threat to members of the public because it is imposed. However, many many more people will contract lung cancer from smoking, but because that is a chosen risk, it is less frightening.

People are also less afraid of a risk when they can exert some physical control over it, which explains why bungee-jumping, sky-diving and skiing remain popular sports despite their riskiness. It also explains why people who are afraid to fly are less fearful of driving the car, despite the much greater statistical risk of dying in an auto accident.

Catastrophic risks, such as an airplane crash, strike more fear in the hearts of individuals than do statistically larger risks that affect individuals rather than hundreds or thousands of people at once.

The "dread factor" also plays a role. "What's worse," Ropeik asks. "Being eaten alive by a shark or dying in your sleep of heart disease?" If you said the shark, you are not alone. However, guess which one is more likely, and logically the one you should be more afraid of?

We perceive a risk as less negative if it is happening to "them" instead of "us." "We see risk through the prism of our vulnerability," Ropeik said. "Before 9/11, terrorism was what happened to other people—embassy workers, soldiers, people in other countries. Now, it could happen to us, in our parks, in our homes, in our offices."

Finally, we are much more afraid of risks to our children than to ourselves. "What's worse," Ropeik asks again. "Asbestos in your workplace or asbestos in your child's school? Our fear goes up if there is a potential effect on future generations."

The chromium 6 controversy several years ago illustrates some of the aspects of public perceptions of risk. Chromium, a known carcinogen when inhaled, was found in water supplies throughout California, particularly in areas once housing the aerospace industry. While little scientific evidence points to its danger as a water contaminant, a highly-publicized lawsuit, later dramatized in the movie "Erin Brockovich," brought a tremendous amount of attention to the issue. In 2000, public outcry drove regulatory agencies to create a stringent goal for chromium in drinking water, despite the lack of scientific evidence.

At the height of the chromium 6 controversy in late 2000, Cone wrote an article for the Times trying to diffuse the hysteria and explain the actual risk from ingesting the compound. The conclusion that chromium 6 was dangerous in drinking water came from a 1968 German study was considered flawed by many, and had been dismissed by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Her article featured a quote from one of the world's leading chromium experts, Max Costa of New York University, calling it "totally stupid and scary" for California to calculate its health goal based on this study.

But if enough people are afraid of something, they create pressure that drives legislators and government agencies to respond. On the chromium 6 issue, public health officials quoted in Cone's story said they "over-erred on the side of public health" because that is what they must do—legally and morally—when faced with scientific uncertainty. Similarly, journalists covering these issues believe they have an obligation to provide their readers with information that could impact their lives or life choices, whether well-documented or controversial.

Cone, who recently taught a course in environmental journalism at UC Berkeley's graduate program, advises journalists and others charged with communicating risk to always put the information into perspective. "We don't want to alarm people unnecessarily. More than being objective and balancing the two sides of a controversy, we must explain the complete situation for the reader."

As a journalist, Setziol says that it is important to be sure that you have sufficient time and space to adequately give your audience ample context, to say 'this is what we know, and this is what we don't know.' "I've had some sleepless nights worrying about how to strike the right balance and get to the appropriate level of concern," she said.

The impacts of risk communication—whether done well or poorly—can have far reaching consequences, causing panic and inevitably money and resources to be spent assuaging fears rather than addressing real risks.

For example, statistically, nuclear power plants pose much less of a risk to their communities than do coal-fire power plants, which spew contaminants into the air. "Coal-fire power plants kill more people each year than Chernobyl did when it erupted," Ropeik said. But the movement against nuclear power plants is so strong that it has created enough pressure to drive the government to spend dollars to appease those fears, money that could be better spent on reducing emissions from coal-fired power plants or other risks with greater significance.

"When we fear the wrong things and force government to respond," Ropeik said. "Then we risk reallocating government resources to the wrong risks and raise our overall peril."

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