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There is no dissonance here, this is FUD. The language is wildly different because the actual risks are wildly different. One kills a lot of people and the othe

by dahart 5y ago

There is no dissonance here, this is FUD. The language is wildly different because the actual risks are wildly different. One kills a lot of people and the other doesn’t. How many people are actually dying from air travel radiation? The numbers are low enough that they’re hard to find evidence for. Here’s a study, for example, that attempted to answer the question for pilots, who obviously fly frequently. They weren’t even able to detect higher death rates at all. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14648170/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14648170/ “Neither external and internal comparisons nor nested case-control analyses showed any substantially increased risks for cancer mortality due to ionizing radiation.” (Edit: of course there are some studies that demonstrate small amounts of increased cancer risk, and increased risk of pregnancy complications for airline crews. The numbers are small.) On the other hand, “Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States” https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal... Even if you are skeptical of the CDC’s estimates for mortality rates by things like second hand smoke, there are pretty clear reasons to take smoking a lot more seriously as a risk than radiation exposure from air travel, the direct risk to smokers is orders of magnitude higher than the risk of air travel radiation. The fact that the CDC’s language reflects the actual risks is a good reason to put more trust in what they say, not less. They’re not trying to hide something from you, they’re trying to help you understand the actual relative differences in risk, which are much, much higher for smoking. Edit2: BTW, the WHO agrees with the CDC about there being no safe levels of smoke, and is backed by significant amounts of research and outcome statistics worldwide. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-health https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(ou...

dionidium 5y ago
First of all, this is a good and fair pushback. But I’d respond that I chose secondhand smoke for a reason. I similarly doubt there’s any measurable impact of being around a smoker every once in a while, but the language around secondhand smoke got more and more hysterical leading up to the widespread implementation of smoking bans, to the point that it’s not uncommon today to hear people complain that walking near a smoker on a sidewalk outside is a risk to their health. That’s basically absurd. But the “no safe level of exposure” language has been used to justify such claims. Finally, to be clear, even if you think this language is good and useful, there’s still utility in thinking about why that’s true, especially if hearing similar language about alcohol bothers you for some reason.
- derefr 5y ago
  > to hear people complain that walking near a smoker on a sidewalk outside is a risk to their health Doesn't have to be the smoke itself that's harmful. Presumably, if you can smell someone's second-hand smoke, you're also inhaling the bacterial spray contained in their breath, no? Something I think about if I'm walking outside without a mask on and end up stuck walking for a while behind a smoker. I tend to put my mask back on.
  - CompelTechnic 5y ago
    The bacterial spray isn't unique to smokers.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    That's what our immune system is for. Covid is a problem at the moment but bacteria really aren't. Your chance to die from a bacterial infection randomly caught from someone in the street is minimal, and exposure boosts your immunity. And they are everywhere anyway. You might get a cold for a few days but that's life.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- dahart 5y ago
  With over a billion smokers on the planet, or ~20% of the population, it’s not that absurd to worry about urban smoke outdoors contributing to urban pollution. Nor wood burning house & backyard fires either, nor cars, but that’s a different debate… We aren’t around smokers once in a while, we’re around them constantly. Even urban outdoor second hand smoke really is a higher risk than air travel radiation. Yes I want the language to be specific about the levels of risk. I would agree that “no safe levels” is vague and less helpful than one or two percentile data points. That said, I completely agree with the CDC’s stance and language on both second hand smoke and air travel radiation.
  - lmm 5y ago
    > Even urban outdoor second hand smoke really is a higher risk than air travel radiation. Isn't this exactly what's in dispute? What's the evidence that this is true?
drzaiusapelord 5y ago
Great comment. Way too much of HN is invested in "nanny state bad and corrupt" justified with FUD-like narratives. There's always this low-simmering culture war here. And really, air travel radiation is the hill these types of people want to die on? The problem with conservative forums like HN is eventually you get on this treadmill of "and so and so isn't so bad" be it alcohol, smoking, Hitler, etc that's a mix of ignorant and purposely dishonest to push agendas. This takes people down some strange and often ignorant and hateful roads, which then helps craft their personalities and core beliefs into something very negative. The reality is, alcohol is pretty toxic and a health organization really shouldn't recommend a daily allowance of it. I think the cognitive dissonance with people who want to be "right with the science" but also want to drink needs to come out somehow and it often comes out, at least with health issues, with these overly-broad and just weird attacks on groups like the CDC or WHO or whatever. Instead, these people could just admit that "Yes, I do this very unhealthy thing for pleasure and its as unhealthy as the experts say it is." Instead, they'd rather nitpick at random things and reach an irrational conclusion than accept the truth of it all. On the healthcare end it works the other way like "Here's some unwarranted nitpicking about vaccines," that terminates to a crazed anti-vaxxer position. Its the same kind of dishonesty and leads to the same types of irrational conclusions. For a lot of people, not only is this how they often think, its the default mode of how they think. They sling mud, project, and attack at any perceived slight against their personal beliefs and the culture war they're always fighting. Its a sign of an emotionally immature mind and these people are everywhere and they build powerful echo chambers. When we see them die of covid as they post facebook memes denying its existence, we then know the fruits of this kind of mental labor. Its dishonestly all the way down.
- ifyoubuildit 5y ago
  > The problem with conservative forums like HN Not terribly on topic, but I've been lurking here for more than a decade, and today I learned that it's a conservative forum. And on top of that, it has the same problems inherent to conservative forums (fora?). Weird.
  - timpattinson 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
scns 5y ago
It may not be deadly, but female flight attendants become infertile earlier than women working on the ground.

by dahart 5y ago

dionidium 5y ago

First of all, this is a good and fair pushback. But I’d respond that I chose secondhand smoke for a reason. I similarly doubt there’s any measurable impact of being around a smoker every once in a while, but the language around secondhand smoke got more and more hysterical leading up to the widespread implementation of smoking bans, to the point that it’s not uncommon today to hear people complain that walking near a smoker on a sidewalk outside is a risk to their health. That’s basically absurd. But the “no safe level of exposure” language has been used to justify such claims. Finally, to be clear, even if you think this language is good and useful, there’s still utility in thinking about why that’s true, especially if hearing similar language about alcohol bothers you for some reason.

derefr 5y ago
> to hear people complain that walking near a smoker on a sidewalk outside is a risk to their health Doesn't have to be the smoke itself that's harmful. Presumably, if you can smell someone's second-hand smoke, you're also inhaling the bacterial spray contained in their breath, no? Something I think about if I'm walking outside without a mask on and end up stuck walking for a while behind a smoker. I tend to put my mask back on.
- CompelTechnic 5y ago
  The bacterial spray isn't unique to smokers.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  That's what our immune system is for. Covid is a problem at the moment but bacteria really aren't. Your chance to die from a bacterial infection randomly caught from someone in the street is minimal, and exposure boosts your immunity. And they are everywhere anyway. You might get a cold for a few days but that's life.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dahart 5y ago
With over a billion smokers on the planet, or ~20% of the population, it’s not that absurd to worry about urban smoke outdoors contributing to urban pollution. Nor wood burning house & backyard fires either, nor cars, but that’s a different debate… We aren’t around smokers once in a while, we’re around them constantly. Even urban outdoor second hand smoke really is a higher risk than air travel radiation. Yes I want the language to be specific about the levels of risk. I would agree that “no safe levels” is vague and less helpful than one or two percentile data points. That said, I completely agree with the CDC’s stance and language on both second hand smoke and air travel radiation.
- lmm 5y ago
  > Even urban outdoor second hand smoke really is a higher risk than air travel radiation. Isn't this exactly what's in dispute? What's the evidence that this is true?

drzaiusapelord 5y ago

Great comment. Way too much of HN is invested in "nanny state bad and corrupt" justified with FUD-like narratives. There's always this low-simmering culture war here. And really, air travel radiation is the hill these types of people want to die on? The problem with conservative forums like HN is eventually you get on this treadmill of "and so and so isn't so bad" be it alcohol, smoking, Hitler, etc that's a mix of ignorant and purposely dishonest to push agendas. This takes people down some strange and often ignorant and hateful roads, which then helps craft their personalities and core beliefs into something very negative. The reality is, alcohol is pretty toxic and a health organization really shouldn't recommend a daily allowance of it. I think the cognitive dissonance with people who want to be "right with the science" but also want to drink needs to come out somehow and it often comes out, at least with health issues, with these overly-broad and just weird attacks on groups like the CDC or WHO or whatever. Instead, these people could just admit that "Yes, I do this very unhealthy thing for pleasure and its as unhealthy as the experts say it is." Instead, they'd rather nitpick at random things and reach an irrational conclusion than accept the truth of it all. On the healthcare end it works the other way like "Here's some unwarranted nitpicking about vaccines," that terminates to a crazed anti-vaxxer position. Its the same kind of dishonesty and leads to the same types of irrational conclusions. For a lot of people, not only is this how they often think, its the default mode of how they think. They sling mud, project, and attack at any perceived slight against their personal beliefs and the culture war they're always fighting. Its a sign of an emotionally immature mind and these people are everywhere and they build powerful echo chambers. When we see them die of covid as they post facebook memes denying its existence, we then know the fruits of this kind of mental labor. Its dishonestly all the way down.

ifyoubuildit 5y ago
> The problem with conservative forums like HN Not terribly on topic, but I've been lurking here for more than a decade, and today I learned that it's a conservative forum. And on top of that, it has the same problems inherent to conservative forums (fora?). Weird.
- timpattinson 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

scns 5y ago

It may not be deadly, but female flight attendants become infertile earlier than women working on the ground.