February 26, 2012, 5:00 pm
The Wages of Eco-Angst
By DAVID ROPEIK
Anxiety: We worry. A gallery of contributors count the ways.
Even
today, when media warnings about the latest health or safety risk are
commonplace, the incessant drumbeat of reported environmental hazards
can be truly alarming, leaving us worried, like the followers of Chicken
Little, that the sky really is falling. But while plenty of these
threats are serious, some of the most frightening eco-bogeymen are not
nearly the dangers that many presume.
Real dangers can arise when we get risk wrong.
Nuclear
radiation, for example, still tangled in many minds with images of
atomic blasts, mutant Godzillas and rampant cancer, is nowhere near as
harmful to human health as most believe. Industrial chemicals at high
enough doses are certainly dangerous, but most, at the low doses to
which we’re exposed, are not. Oil spills are certainly horrible, but it
takes just a few years before the dynamic ocean breaks down most of the
mess — even for the really bad ones — and the recovery is well underway.
No comments:
Post a Comment