The Top Ten Unfounded Health Scares of 2007

I'm sure like most of you, I get scores of spam and hoax emails, which I try to ignore. When, however, they are related to health issues, I try to research the information for validity (and usually fail to find 'evidence'). This article then, piqued my interest...

Unfounded health scares have been with us for a long time, from a panic over chemicals on cranberries in the 50s to the hysteria over Alar on apples in the late 1980s. Here's a list of the ones we considered most ridiculous in 2007:

Scare #1: There's deadly lead in lipstick. Not true -- the tiny amounts are harmless.

Scare #2: Fluoridated water jeopardizes your health. Nope -- it promotes dental health.

Scare #3: Red meat and processed meat increase cancer risk. Hogwash -- the studies involved people eating huge amounts and leading very sedentary lives. Meat is fine in a balanced diet.

Scare #4: The chemicals used to make Teflon cause low-birth-weight babies. No way -- the variations in weight in the studies are too small to draw such conclusions.

Scare #5: Nitrites in cured meat cause lung disease. Baloney -- super-high exposure of rats to a related chemical may cause cancer, but that's not relevant to us.

Scare #6: Roses contain toxic pesticides. Here's a better idea -- stop and smell the roses.

Scare #7: Rubber duckies are toxic to kids because of chemicals called phthalates. Another attempt to get attention by frightening parents.

Scare #8: Vaccines cause autism. Nope -- many studies have shown small traces of vaccine preservative aren't harmful to kids.

Scare #9: Office printers are as hazardous as secondhand smoke. No, no, no -- they're only comparable in that you can arbitrarily lump smoke and printer particles together as "pollution."

Scare #10: Water bottles cause cancer. Drink up -- virtually no trace of the relevant chemicals leaches into your water.

For details on these and other nonsensical scares, visit our site: www.acsh.org and until then, the American Council on Science and Health advises you to remain calm and skeptical.

Posted 02/29/2008 by The Medscape Journal of Medicine.
Presenter: Elizabeth M. Whelan, ScD, MS, MPH of the American Council on Science and Health.