Interactions between State and Federal Programs

Milton Russell, Assistant Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said, “Real people are suffering and dying because they don’t know when to worry and when to calm down. They don’t know when to demand action to reduce risk, and when to relax because the health risks are trivial or simply not there.” He went on to note that failure in risk communication can have several negative effects, including (1) diversion of societal attention and resources from important health or environmental problems; (2) diversion of personal attention from real risks that can be reduced to insignificant risks; (3) unnecessary human suffering due to high levels of anxiety and worry; and (4) defensive indifference or the attitude that if everything causes cancer, why do anything?