Hamburgers and
other deliciously
fatty foods
contribute to heart
disease, one of the
biggest killers in
this country. Yet
we have no gut
instinct to avoid
them.
DAN SAELINGER/GE T T Y IMAGES
tional ways we behave, social scientists have only just begun to systematically document and understand
this central aspect of our nature. In
the ;;;;s and ;;;;s, many still clung
to the homo economicus model. ;ey
argued that releasing detailed information about nuclear power and
pesticides would convince the public
that these industries were safe. But
the information drop was an epic
backfire and helped spawn opposition groups that exist to this day.
Part of the resistance stemmed from
a reasonable mistrust of industry
spin. Horri;c incidents like those at
Love Canal and ;ree Mile Island did
not help. Yet one of the biggest obstacles was that industry tried to frame
risk purely in terms of data, without
addressing the fear that is an instinctual reaction to their technologies.
The strategy persists even today.
In the aftermath of Japan’s nuclear
crisis, many nuclear-energy boost-
ers were quick to cite a study com-
missioned by the Boston-based
nonpro;t Clean Air Task Force. ;e
study showed that pollution from
coal plants is responsible for ;;,;;;
premature deaths and ;;,;;; heart
attacks in the United States each
year, while nuclear power has never
been implicated in a single death
in this country. True as that may
be, numbers alone cannot explain
away the cold dread caused by the
specter of radiation. Just think of all
those alarming images of workers
clad in radiation suits waving Geiger
counters over the anxious citizens
of Japan. Seaweed, anyone?
;; ;;;;; ; ;;; ;;;;;;;;;; ;;;-
moters have become much more
savvy in understanding the way
the public perceives risk. ;e nanotechnology world in particular has
taken a keen interest in this process, since even in its infancy it has
faced high-profile fears. Nanotech,
a field so broad that even its backers have trouble defining it, deals
with materials and devices whose
components are often smaller than
;/;;;,;;;,;;;,;;; of a meter. In the
late ;;;;s, the book Engines of Creation by the nanotechnologist K. Eric
Drexler put forth the terrifying idea
of nanoscale self-replicating robots
that grow into clouds of “gray goo”
and devour the world. Soon gray
goo was turning up in video games,
magazine stories, and delightfully
bad Hollywood action ;icks (see, for
instance, the last G.I. Joe movie).
The odds of nanotechnology’s
killing off humanity are extremely
remote, but the science is obviously not without real risks. In ;;;;
a study led by researchers at the
University of Edinburgh suggested
that carbon nanotubes, a promising material that could be used in
everything from bicycles to electrical circuits, might interact with the
body the same way asbestos does.
In another study, scientists at the
University of Utah found that nano-scopic particles of silver used as an
antimicrobial in hundreds of products, including jeans, baby bottles,
and washing machines, can deform
;sh embryos.
;e nanotech community is eager
to put such risks in perspective. “In
Europe, people made decisions about
genetically modified food irrespec-
tive of the technology,” says Andrew
Maynard, director of the Risk Science
Center at the University of Michigan
and an editor of the International
Handbook on Regulating Nanotech-
nologies. “People felt they were being
bullied into the technology by big
corporations, and they didn’t like it.
;ere have been very small hints of
that in nanotechnology.” He points to
incidents in which sunblock makers
did not inform the public they were
including zinc oxide nanoparticles
in their products, stoking the skepti-
cism and fears of some consumers.
