Risk: A Practical Guide for Deciding What's Really Safe and What's Really Dangerous in the World Around You

by David Ropeik, George Gray

An indispensable and timely guide, Risk is the authority for assessing threats to your health and safety.

We continually face new risks in our world. This essential family reference will help you understand worrisome risks so you can decide how to stay safe and how to keeps risks in perspective. Expert authors David Ropeik and George Gray include information on:

- 50 top hazards - your likelihood of exposure - the consequences - ways to reduce your risk

They cover topics such as:

- cancer - biological weapons - indoor air pollution - pesticides - radiation

Genres: Nonfiction

485 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Misty · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book really brings perspective to many commonly-feared risks in our world. It could, however, give us more things to consider when evaluating the numbers presented.

[David Olmsted · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lets face it, the press generally does a poor job of reporting the risk or benefits of some latest research topic often not even mentioning the sample size or the basic numbers. Consequently I was hoping this book had some hard data on various topic but instead what is presented semi-quantitative risk meters covering likelihood and consequences. This seems to reflect the difficulty and incompleteness of risk data. An idea data set would cover all ages from birth to death. One would expect the curve of some risk factor such death from smoking (to take the most extreme case) to peak around age 60 while not showing much difference from normal death rates near age 20 nor around age 90 when everyone is dieing off. I think one can see just how much reported risk data might be meaningless as it is so dependent on the age range of the study. Still this book is better than nothing.

[Laurence Favrot · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as part of a college course on risk. You can summarize the main point as follows: the media distorts our perception of risk; informed study of an issue generally results in a more nuanced and less reactive view of the risk posed by that issue. Indeed, not everything is going to give us cancer. Thoughtful people will likely find this book redundant to their daily existence.

[Trevor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did not know before hand that cooking with a microwave uses less energy than cooking with the stovetop...