Irrational fear of risk lessens our enjoyment of life

Living fully means taking risks, and it’s pointless trying to hide away from them

I WORK WITH radiation protection at UCC and I have been approached in the past by people who were worried about radioactive emissions from Sellafield and who puffed away on cigarettes while they questioned me. We tend to react in an exaggerated and sometimes irrational manner to rare and unfamiliar risks and to be blasé about familiar risks and about natural risks.

What might you feel concerned about when driving to the airport to travel by aircraft? You might worry that the aircraft will crash or be blown up by terrorists, but you probably don’t even think about crashing the car, which is a far more likely eventuality than an air crash or a terrorist incident.

Human attitude to risk was formed over millions of years as our brains evolved to cope with the risks we most frequently encountered, ie attack by dangerous animals, extreme weather, physical dangers such as floods, great heights, forest fires, and so on. Over our long evolutionary history we would not even have been conscious of rare and unfamiliar risks or long-term natural risks such as over-exposure to sunlight, and so on.

We all now know that smoking cigarettes is deadly dangerous – this message has been pounded into our heads incessantly for the past 20 years. Each packet of cigarettes carries a message in large capital letters that tells us: SMOKING THESE WILL KILL YOU. And yet, 24 per cent of Irish people still smoke cigarettes. We don’t worry much about familiar risks.

Other dangerous activities that we commonly indulge in without worry include sun-bathing, inhaling higher than average levels of the natural radioactive gas radon, climbing ladders, riding bicycles without reflectors or helmets, taking part in certain sports activities such as boxing, rugby, skiing, etc. Even adventure activities such as mountain climbing or undertaking extreme expeditions do not unduly worry us.

And then, consider the following sample of risks that we worry about a lot but from which, under normal circumstances, there is little or no danger: radiation from mobile phone masts, radioactive emissions from Sellafield, immunisation of infants, air-travel, “germ-laden” domestic surfaces that require vigilant spraying with germicides lest they sicken the toddler, and so on.

Studies (eg Risk Evaluation and Decision Making, Bo Lindell, Proceedings International Congress of Radiation Protection, 1996, Vol 1) have shown that our attitude to risk is determined by how we respond to a limited number of factors. We have a positiveattitude towards the risk associated with a particular situation (think it is less risky) when we agree with the first factor of each of the following paired factors, and we have a negativeattitude towards the risk when we agree with the second factor:

• The risk involved is voluntary/ involuntary
• I understand the risk/ don't understand
• The risk is familiar/ unfamiliar
• I trust those responsible/ don't trust
• I control the situation/ don't have control
• The risk is natural (eg radon)/ the risk is artificial or "man-made"
• I receive a benefit from undertaking the risk/ I receive no benefit
  

It is interesting to run a few risks through these factors, eg air travel, nuclear power, and so on. Rare risks that we don't really understand tend to provoke an irrational response. For example, the 9/11 twin tower terrorist attack provoked some highly questionable responses in America and, internationally, we are all now subjected to intensive security checks at airports. As I reported recently in this column, there is no evidence that this frantic airport security reduces the risk of terrorist activity (paper in British Medical Journal, December 22nd, 2007 by Eleni Linos and colleagues).

Indeed, there is good reason to think that it is useless. Everyone is treated as a potential terrorist and the total security effort is divided over a huge number of people, the vast majority of whom are harmless. The terrorist, an extremely rare occurrence, receives no more attention than I do. Airport security should be based largely on intelligence, so that more attention could be directed against the real threat.

In the developed world we are forgetting how to live with unavoidable risk and uncertainty. We have conquered most of the major risks that plagued previous generations, such as the major infectious diseases. But, instead of breathing a sigh of relief and relaxing, we now worry about very low risk activities, like immunising babies, despite scientific assurances that these activities are safe.

Being alive is risky and there is no way around this. Even if you stayed in bed the whole time in order to eliminate risk, you would not succeed. Your muscles would waste away from disuse and an aircraft might crash into your house. Elimination of risk is impossible to achieve, yet we demand this impossible standard in many areas. The only sensible way to live is to make efforts to understand the risks, take action to sensibly minimise them, acknowledge that risk cannot be eliminated . . . and get on with it.

William Reville is associate professor of biochemistry and public awareness of science officer at University College Cork – http://understandingscience.ucc.ie