Regarding pollution, health risks often are seen against a background of concern over a deteriorating global environment. That larger concern involves escalating population growth and uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources in addition to chemical pollution, yet it is often that pollution potential for human health effects, cancer especially, that receives the most attention. This may be because of the immediate and personal implications of possible effects on health. Those implications often can command far more lasting attention than other hazards that are more remote and impersonal, even though the actual risks may be very small. For whatever reason, often it is observed that people feel more concern for risks over which they have no personal control than for risks associated with their familiar everyday life habits.
Risks appear more dangerous if they are imposed from outside, regardless of the size of such risks.
Hence concern regarding cancer risks arising from tobacco use and unbalanced diets often are greatly overshadowed by concern for possible pesticide exposures, even though the risks are vastly different. By the same token, risks that arise from man-made sources often are perceived as far more dangerous than those of natural origin. The existence of natural pesticides of various sorts in virtually all plant species, and hence regular exposure to such chemicals in one's daily diet receives far less attention than the low levels of pesticide residues that occasionally can be detected in foods and that nearly always are at levels well below regulatory safety limits. In this context, the central problem may lie with the tendency to perceive risk while ignoring dose. It obviously is important that all communications regarding risk should focus strongly on information regarding levels of dose and pathways of exposure.