Risk is Normal to Life Itself

Abstract

Health and safety professionals face an enormous challenge. We must communicate about safety in the context of all risks that society faces. The health and safety professional must be scientifically accurate while working in an atmosphere that is frequently emotionally charged. As professionals, we face decisions that force us to balance voluntary risks and externally imposed risks. How do we set “safety levels” in this context? Even more important, are we allowing rational risk decisions to be relegated to computerized risk analyses that have so many compounded errors that common sense tells us the estimates are clearly wrong? Absurd conclusions, of course, lead to loss of credibility in the entire field of risk assessment. In an emotionally-charged environment, perceptions are reality. Perceptions are frequently far from scientific reality, but perceptions are so strongly held that scientific reality alone cannot change opinion. Until risk communicators learn to address perceptions concurrently with scientific reality, we will find little improvement in the general understanding of relative risk and, hence, little acceptance of slight risks. No one has the correct answer to effective risk communication yet, but we must continue the search for optimum communication techniques.