In a recent article in Mountain State Spotlight, Maya Nye, an environmental activist in West Virginia, announced her preference for a risk-free life.
Speaking of changes in federal rules that would impose stringent limits on, among other things, ethylene oxide emissions, Ms. Nye was quoted as saying the following:
“Any reductions are good, that’s what’s a step in the right direction, but it really needs to be zero risk,” said Maya Nye, a Kanawha Valley resident and member of the Charleston-based People Concerned About Chemical Safety. “That’s all that’s acceptable, personally, to me.”
Zero risk. That is an incredible standard that we all intuitively understand is practically impossible. If we live in a floodplain or the Gulf Coast, we know that our houses may be one bad weather event away from destruction. Each time we drive a car or board a plane, we know that an accident is possible.
We are aware of those risks, but they don’t prevent us from engaging in activities that are enjoyable and useful. We don’t insist on there being no risk at all. We post speed limits, require seat belts to be used, and mandate airbags, all to reduce the risk of driving. But no one advocates the zero-risk option, which would be the elimination of vehicles.
Modern life is built on our use of a wide variety of chemicals. We can do without them in the same sense that we could do without cars – theoretically feasible, but not practically possible. The alternative to doing away with them is to calculate the risks they pose.
And once you calculate the risks of doing something, you still have to account for the risks of not doing something.
If you won’t get into a car for fear of being in an accident, you can’t easily get to a doctor’s office for treatment. If you prevent the manufacture of ethylene oxide you eliminate one of the principal means of sterilizing medical equipment that can’t be sterilized by radiation or heat.
About 20 billion medical devices, approximately half of all sterilized medical devices, are treated with ethylene oxide. Ethylene oxide is also used to make drinking water safer, and to treat certain foods so that they can be safely consumed.
If we make it too difficult to produce ethylene oxide, if we insist that there be no risk associated with it whatsoever, we have to be prepared for the law of unintended consequences to enforce itself.
If those 20 billion medical devices are sterilized with a less effective method, how many infections will develop, and how many deaths follow?
The American Cancer Society has calculated the chance of developing a cancer as approximately 1 in 2 as a male, and 1 in 3 as a female. Meanwhile, in setting water quality standards for carcinogens, West Virginia sets its limits for cancer-causing substances at a level that won’t result in more than one 1 in 1,000,000 cancer cases.
Compare that to the lifetime risk of dying in a car accident of 1 in 93 persons, or a 1 in 366 chance of being in car accident for every 10,000 miles driven.
There are, and should be, debates about the amount of risk associated with chemical production, and how that risk should be weighed. But the idea of living a risk-free life is a dead end. It is seductive in its simplicity, and harmful in its effect.
Yaussy is chairman of the Environmental Practice Group at Spilman, Thomas & Battle in Charleston. He frequently represents the fossil fuel industry and trade association groups.