Communicating more clearly about deaths caused by air pollution

Abstract

How can scientists and risk assessors best communicate with each other, the media, the public, and policy makers what is known, what is guessed, and what is still unknown or uncertain about how changes in air pollution affect human mortality? Current practice includes emphatic pronouncements, striking headlines, and colorful infographics about deaths attributed to air pollution. Important qualifications, uncertainties, and unverified assumptions are often buried deeply in technical paper if they are stated at all. Although some sensational claims about air pollution mortalities have proved to be mistaken, errors and corrections receive little or no attention from media, policy makers, or interest groups who helped to spread the original sensational claims. More encouragingly, substantial recent progress has been made in technical methods for quantifying and communicating what is known about how reducing exposure affects health risks and uncertainties. These advances make it possible to better describe and explain both what we now know and what we are still uncertain about for human health effects of interventions that reduce pollution levels. We review progress in accurate communication about deaths caused by air pollution and discuss how advances in quantitative risk assessment and risk communication can provide a more useful basis for informing public opinion and policy deliberations – one that is more accurate and that answers more relevant questions – than the infographics and sensational claims that dominate risk communication about air pollution deaths today.