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The 5 Most Ridiculously Over-Hyped Health Scares of All Time

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#2.
Asbestos in New York City Public Schools

Few environmental hazards strike more fear in our terrified little hearts than asbestos. Tell someone they have asbestos in their house and you might as well tell them they have a chainsaw wielding serial killer in their house. Actually, given the exorbitant costs involved with removing asbestos from a house, most people would prefer the serial killer.

So when it was revealed in 1993 that an independent contractor hired by the New York City Board of Education to inspect schools for asbestos had failed to perform the inspections properly, nobody was surprised by Mayor David Dinkins decision to not allow kids to return to classes until proper inspections could be performed. Granted, the decision kept over one million kids out of school for two weeks, threw the plans of their working families into chaos, and panicked the shit out of countless parents who thought they had been sending their kids off to get cancer on a daily basis, but it had to be done to keep the kids safe, right?

So what's the problem? For starters, the type of asbestos that was typically found in schools, including those in New York City, was not the monster-under-the-bed type that tends to kill people. No, when you absolutely, positively must kill every motherfucker in the room, crocidolite or amosite is what you need. Chrysotile asbestos, the kind present in the NYC schools, on the other hand, is easily expelled from the lungs and therefore far less dangerous.

The risk of death was in the range of .009 deaths per million. And while you may say that any risk is too much, dammit, you should keep in mind that a child is a thousand times more likely to die playing high school football.

Also, in other schools, botched asbestos removal jobs had actually left the buildings with higher levels of asbestos in the air than if they'd done nothing. But why let that get in the way of a good panic?

In 1993, asbestos in New York schools killed Fewer People Than ...

... were killed in hot air balloon crashes.



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131 Comments

Wait. Aren't ospreys and peregrine falcons the same bird?

Posted on 9/5/2008 9:04:27 PM

My Dad was there for the clean up, I still have all the pictures. When he was done his hands and feet were full of radiation so they taped him up with plastic bags and sent him to work on another power plant. A lot of the guys sent in after were exposed to a lot of radiation. Good news my sister only has ADHD and works on military aircrafts.

Posted on 9/3/2008 6:46:08 PM

Your right, its more like a virus that develops an immunity to a vaccine. Still, it doesn't change the fact that if you don't kill all the insects, a few will inevitably develop a resistance to DDT (evolution) and make the problem worse. I don't know much about Diabetes and insulin, but I don't think insulin makes Diabetes worse.

The reason we should worry that birds are being killed from DDT is that, like us, they are higher up on the food web. DDT concentrations increase each time you move up a step in the food chain, so DDT could have a similar effect on humans if we spray the crap out of everything.

Yeah, malaria does = massive suck. However, I really think there must be a better solution for the present that doesn't endanger our future.

Posted on 7/31/2008 3:16:52 PM

Yeah, Texan12, why bother spraying DDT? Mosquitos will only develop resistance to it. Definitely not a long-term solution.

Also you diabetics should stop taking insulin because we know it isn't going to cure your diabetes. What you need to find is a LONG-TERM solution.

It still stands that DDT kills a crapload of malaria-carrying mosquitos. And having malaria = massive suck.

I say let the DDT flow. I couldn't care less what happens to a couple species of birds if it means a dramatic decrease in malaria-related deaths.

And if you really want to be a smarty-pants, the way we develop a resistance to the flu and how mosquitos would develop a resistance against DDT is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. So there.

Posted on 7/31/2008 8:24:40 AM

Silent Spring, while most definitely a boring piece of literature, hardly deserves to be a "Ridiculously Over-Hyped Health Scare".

The evidence in this article disavowing Carson's hypothesis that DDT is dangerous is both sparse and qualitative. An increase in the population of 26 bird species is trivial to the fact that there are thousands of other bird species in the US alone.

Also, DDT has never been banned for anti-malaria use. Even so, the use of pesticides to decrease the population of disease carrying insects is a temporary solution, as it would only be a matter of time before the insect would develop an immunity to the pesticide (much like you or I would develop a resistance to the flu).

I hardly see how one could think Carson's work resulted in a panic- there is no evidence linking Silent Spring to any harmful side effect. Oh, unless your talking about the "increase of approximately a bajilllion fofillion percent".

Posted on 7/27/2008 10:32:47 PM

Wait! Kinda like parsley is a health scare now?!

Posted on 7/25/2008 4:12:17 PM

she is also a hippie.

Posted on 6/27/2008 9:20:01 AM

incase you didn't know,kiera is the girl at my school that is best friends with "the homo".

Posted on 6/27/2008 9:19:42 AM

hippies overreact too much and end up dooming everything they try to save.that's why Kiera gets on my nerves a little too much these days...

Posted on 6/27/2008 9:18:26 AM

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Posted on 6/18/2008 7:00:04 PM

Make no bones about it, behind a stiff majority of these "scares" are people who's buddies need a little "government contract" work. I've seen it, many times.

Posted on 6/17/2008 10:50:27 AM

Maybe you should do an article about 10 Ridicules Ways Proved To Be Able To Give You Cancer...
Or a Top 100. There are so many silly/weird ones, I promise you!

Posted on 6/17/2008 10:28:37 AM

LMFAO. The spam comment below mine is priceless. I love it.

Posted on 6/16/2008 8:37:15 AM

we have only one earth mother and she is a sexy big beauty, and lives at http://www.zhongwenred.com

Posted on 6/11/2008 10:32:23 AM

More articles like this on Cracked! Informative and yet very funny stuff.

Posted on 6/9/2008 1:33:02 PM

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Posted on 6/8/2008 11:41:35 PM

I actually had to read Silent Spring my senior year of high school
PURE TORTURE
damn you Rachael Carson!!

Posted on 6/8/2008 6:10:53 PM

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Posted on 5/26/2008 12:45:24 AM

Hey... Did you know that 90% of the stuff you come into contact with is carcinogenic?? This is not some crap I found on a dodgey site... I actually major in Chemistry!

Posted on 5/13/2008 3:07:59 AM

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