Hyping Health Risks: Environmental Hazards in Daily Life and the Science of Epidemiology [Hardcover]

Geoffrey C Kabat (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0231141483 | ISBN-13: 978-0231141482 | Edition: 1

The media constantly bombard us with news of health hazards lurking in our everyday lives, but many of these hazards turn out to have been greatly overblown. According to author and epidemiologist Geoffrey C. Kabat, this hyping of low-level environmental hazards leads to needless anxiety and confusion on the part of the public concerning which exposures have important effects on health and which are likely to have minimal or no effect.

Kabat approaches health scares as "social facts" and shows that a variety of factors can contribute to the inflating of a hazard. These include skewed reporting by the media, but also, surprisingly, the actions of researchers who may emphasize certain findings while ignoring others; regulatory and health agencies eager to show their responsiveness to the health concerns of the public; and politicians and advocates with a stake in a particular outcome.

By means of four case studies, Kabat demonstrates how a powerful confluence of interests can lead to overstating or distorting the scientific evidence. He considers the health risks of pollutants such as DDT as a cause of breast cancer, electromagnetic fields from power lines, radon within residences, and secondhand tobacco smoke. Tracing the trajectory of each of these hazards from its initial emergence to the present, Kabat shows how publication of more rigorous studies and critical assessments ultimately help put hazards in perspective.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The book can engage and enlighten regarding the complex context in which known and suspected health risks are identified, explored, and acted on.

(Barbara Gastel, M.D., M.P.H The New England Journal of Medicine 1/29/09)

A strong, valuable corrective to public understanding of the debate of environmental hazards... Highly Recommended.

(CHOICE 6/1/09)

Reading and reflecting on the thesis of this book can only help epidemiologists be more aware of our place in society and thus be more effective contributors.

(David A. Savitz American Journal of Epidemiology Vol. 169, No. 8)

With clarity and dispassion, Geoffrey C. Kabat challenges widespread beliefs that secondhand smoke, low levels of radon, and other ostensible environmental nemeses are certain killers. In making his case, Kabat draws extensively on scientific evidence while shunning rhetoric and political posturing. The result is an admirable search for scientific truth amid a sea of conflicting and often uninformed opinions.

(Leonard Cole, Rutgers University )

Geoffrey C. Kabat, a respected epidemiologist, provides an insider's account of how a number of ostensible health hazards have been blown out of proportion. While we face a daily barrage of health scares, Kabat cuts through the confusion and provides a lucid and rigorous rationale for rejecting much of the fear culture that permeates our society.

(Shelly Ungar, University of Toronto )

This book does an exceptionally good job, first by putting epidemiology within the context of public health and then by explaining key terms, concepts, and methods. It provides a penetrating treatment of a difficult and complex subject in a readily understandable way.

(Steven D. Stellman, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University )

"Kabat, who wrote Hyping Health Risks--a fascinating and detailed examination of how we fell for certain, illusory environmental hazards--is possibly the only epidemiologist in the world to have also published a book on Dostoyevsky (he got a Ph.D in Russian and comparative literature from Columbia before switching tracks). And the background in literary analysis and theory adds a crucial ability to explain why we, as a society, are prone to turning hypothetical risks into "social facts." The upshot is that most public alarms about health risks dispense with the tools required to make sense of the alarm--and we end up with "disembodied findings" and ideology."

(Trevor Butterworth Forbes )

"Health scares come and go, but they often have a tenuous scientific basis. Kabat, a cancer epidemiologist, systematically rips through cancer alerts that overrode scientific rigor in recent decades. In so doing, he dispels the dubious science underlying the scares and explains how public confusion can come about. … He extends his critique to debates linking radon gas exposure and secondhand cigarette smoke exposure to lung cancer. Those chapters will ruffle some feathers, but Kabat is unafraid of controversy."

(Nathan Seppa ScienceNews )

rich and valuable...

(Trevor Butterworth Forbes.com 12/13/2011)

Review

Geoffrey C. Kabat, a respected epidemiologist, provides an insider's account of how a number of ostensible health hazards have been blown out of proportion. While we face a daily barrage of health scares, Kabat cuts through the confusion and provides a lucid and rigorous rationale for rejecting much of the fear culture that permeates our society.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press; 1 edition (July 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231141483
• ISBN-13: 978-0231141482
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,240,057 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

As an epidemiologist, Geoffrey Kabat has studied the causes of cancer for thirty years, focusing on a range of factors including smoking, alcohol, diet, hormones, obesity, and electromagnetic fields. In recent years he became interested in the way in which information about health risks often gets distorted and exaggerated, leading to widespread confusion among the public about what risks are worth worrying about. His book "Hyping Health Risks" (2008) attempts to explain how a variety of factors contribute to the "manufacture" of hazards and how the resulting "hazards" must be understood as "social facts." The book has been favorably reviewed in the New England Journal of Medicine, the American Journal of Epidemiology, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere, and was named an "outstanding academic title, 2009" by CHOICE.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully done! January 28, 2009

By Michael J. Mcfadden

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Dr. Kabat's analysis of how the media presents scientific studies and how the public is easily fooled into fear by perceptions that the "cause of the day" represents a real and imminent threat to their lives is beautifully done.

Dr. Kabat avoids the easy road of political polemic and presents his work in a style that's rigorous and above attack. I spend an inordinate amount of time researching current news and opinions regarding one of the subjects he treats (the "secondhand smoke scare" issue) and have observed that the critics who might normally be expected to attack a work like this are simply dead silent: they have no substantive criticisms to offer and the style of his work doesn't lend itself well to simple silly mudslinging. And while he treats each of several different problems independently within their own sections of the book, he does a beautiful job of couching those analyses within a larger themed structure that draws a compelling picture of a need for a wide reassessment of how scientific research is done and presented to the public in today's world of headline-hungry media.

The approach and style is more formal than some other books in the same area (My own work, while sticking tightly to a high standard of accuracy, tends to be a bit more polemic than Kabat's.) and the font size could have been just a bit larger (Hey, I'm being picky here, but once you get over 40 or so you appreciate bigger fonts!) but the content is absolutely stellar and I have no hesitation at all in giving both the book and Dr. Kabat a five star review. It's difficult for a scientist or researcher in today's competitive grant-seeking market to step outside the "popular" approach to research that simply accepts the strictures of rubber stamping the politically correct views that control the pursestrings, but Kabat evidently has more integrity than most who are out there and as you read "Hyping..." I think you'll agree he has what it takes to back up his stand.

It's just sad that there aren't more professionals with similar courage.

Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Artificial Hyping of Risks September 18, 2008

By Gordon S. Hassing

Format:Hardcover

Professor Kabat does an excellent job in describing how a combination of zealous regulators, activists, and media can combine to magnify "alarming" results of preliminary, usually inadequate or poorly done studies. Once these headlines are in the public psyche, it can take years, even decades, of further, expensive studies to demonstrate the early alarms were false. Meanwhile, many are scared, and billions of dollars are spent to "fix" or "avoid" the so-called problem.

Four examples are explored in detail, complete with literature references. They are: a) environmental chemicals can cause breast cancer, b) electromagnetic fields (mostly from power lines) can cause various cancers, c)radon gas in homes can cause lung cancer, and d)the (lack of)effects of second-hand smoke. The discussions are thorough and convincing. In addition, Professor Kabat has a chapter describing the science of epidemiology, and points out the usefulness as well as the weakness of the technique.

This is an excellent read for both the layman and the professional in the field.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars an honest epidemiologist October 28, 2008

By F. R Anscombe

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

In a dispassionate and painstaking way, Kabat sheds light on four health scares: radon, electromagnetic fields from power lines, DDT as a cause of breast cancer, and second-hand tobacco smoke.
If epidemiologists are to contribute useful insights, they need to be mindful of strengths versus weaknesses in evidence. Kabat quotes a distinguished pioneer of risks associated with cigarettes, Sir Richard Peto: "epidemiology is so beautiful and provides such an important perspective on human life and death, but an incredible amount of rubbish is published." After hyping by journalists, rubbish can be given undue credibility by governments eager to respond to public concerns. John Ioannadis: "In the past, we had few research findings, while currently we have too many research findings. Therefore, getting rid of tentative but wrong research findings should become at least as important as finding new ones." Kabat supports weighing evidence in a critically-minded, inter-disciplinary way. The only way to overcome misinformation is via still stronger science.
Chapter 2 overviews the field of epidemiology. Kabat mentions examples of valuable achievements: cholera as a water-borne disease; smoking and cancers; alcohol and cancers; risk factors for heart disease; estrogen, progesterone and breast cancer; sleep position and sudden infant death syndrome; solar radiation and skin cancer; hepatitis b and liver cancer. Cholera was a clear cause, a problem amenable to investigation by mapping victims and water supplies.
Kabat readably integrates narrow articles into an understandable big picture. Physicist William R. Bennett (pioneer of gas lasers) calculated a barefoot railroad worker standing on wet tracks bearing electric current would receive a dose orders of magnitude lower than fields normally inside our bodies. New England Journal of Medicine: "all these epidemiological studies have been conducted in pursuit of a cause of cancer for which there is no plausible biologic basis." Kabat: "it is hard to escape the impression that the reluctance of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences working group to close the door on the possibility of electromagnetic force as a cause of leukemia had more to do with its members' stake in this area of research than with scientific rigor." Self-interest may have blinded them to "fundamental insights about the phenomenon whose effects they were investigating." Epidemiology should work in conjuction with other disciplines, not disregard them.
It is when health scares are at their most contentious that society is in most need of scientists willing to look honestly at a topic, without succumbing to prevailing fashion. Without an unswerving commitment to seek the truth, science ill-serves the public good. Kabat offers worthy lessons to epidemiologists who aspire to serve via honest practice. Well done.