ES&T
GUEST EDITORIAL Combating environmental hysteria—An ACS responsibility One of the most important issues in environmen tal health today is the general public's perception of environmental problems. Often the public is fright ened and confused in response to a bewildering num ber of accounts of presumed cancer-causing agents in our air, food, and water. This reaction is not surprising since the public faces a nearly impossible task in at tempting to separate the legitimate claims of scientific findings from other headline-grabbing studies of much lesser credibility. The net result is that each region of the country has its own list of examples of extreme public overreaction to environmental problems. The public needs to be educated on the methods used by scientists to determine the health risks of en vironmental toxins and on how to interpret and better understand reported studies. Certainly local news papers and even moderate-sized daily newspapers are often ill-equipped to interpret the findings they report in the field of environmental risk assessment. Yet these reports often serve as the basis of public opinion and influence courses of action with regard to such things as the purchasing of bottled water or home water pu rification devices, or having dental X-rays taken. While these examples of changes in a course of action influenced by the media may seem minor, this may not always be the case. For example, a Science article several years ago reported that media-generated concern over the potential adverse health effects of spray adhesives caused at least one pregnant woman to abort her child—only to find out later that the original study was inaccurate. The issue, then, is who instructs the public. In my
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opinion, this task is too important to be left to the newspapers, whose primary goal is to sell newspapers and where studies reporting negative findings aren't usually newsworthy. There is a true leadership void in this area. Little attention has been given to this educational need at the local, state, and federal levels. The ACS should establish a public education program in the area of environmental health in conjunction with societies such as the Society of Occupational and Environmental Health, the American College of Toxicology, and the Society of Toxicology. These groups, along with the ACS, have very high credibility as opposed to politically based groups, and should be able to contribute meaningfully to the education of the general public in this critical area. While professional societies, ACS included, rightly are designed to ad vance their professions through a multitude of ac tivities, they must not lose sight of the fact that they are leaders in society and should direct part of their activities into meaningful educational programs for the general public.
© 1983 American Chemical Society
Edward J Calabrese Edward J. Calabrese is α professor in the environmental health program of the School of Public Health at the University of Massachusetts—Amherst.
Environ. Sci. Technol., Vol. 17, No. 2, 1983
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