Crayons, asbestos, and risk

Let's have a little chat about the topic of risk.

It's something that a lot of people don't understand, but in principle, it's a simple concept.  Actuaries, and other folks who get paid to think about such things, define risk as the product of two probabilities: the probability of exposure and the probability of harm.

The problem is that misassessment of one or both of these two probabilities leads people to (in some cases) wildly overestimate the risk of certain behaviors, and (in others) to wildly underestimate it.  Often, these misassessments have to do with the familiarity of something -- familiar, everyday things are usually considered safer than they really are, and unfamiliar ones more dangerous, regardless of whether those perceptions are at all rooted in reality.

Dan Gilbert, in his wonderful TED talk "Why We Make Bad Decisions," illustrated this perfectly with a photograph of a burning skyscraper, a plane crash, a terrorist bombing site, and a swimming pool.  He then asked the audience to play the Sesame Street game of "Which Of These Things Is Not Like The Other?"  "If you chose the swimming pool, you're correct," Gilbert said.  "Because of the four, it's the one that is by far the most likely to kill you."

This becomes even worse when we start looking at the risk of "chemicals."  I put the word "chemicals" in quotation marks, because of course, everything is made up of chemicals.  (I once saw a sign for "U-Pick Organic Chemical-Free Strawberries."  Ponder that one for a while.)  The problem is, lots of people don't understand chemistry, and so anything with a fancy-sounding name immediately gets put in the "unfamiliar/dangerous" column, even if it's a perfectly innocuous compound, or even one that is essential for life.

Even dangerous chemicals, of course, don't necessarily act straightforwardly.  It's not enough to say that a compound is toxic -- you also have to ask how likely it is to get inside you and cause trouble, and whether the dosage you're being exposed to is, in fact, dangerous.  It's why all of the panic earlier this year about "radioactive water from Fukushima" being detected on the shores of western Canada was unfounded -- the radioactive isotope detected, cesium 134, was only discovered because it's unlikely to get into seawater any other way.  Jay Cullen, oceanographer at the University of Victoria, said, "We're more than a thousand-fold below even the drinking water standard in the coastal waters being sampled at this point.  Those levels are much much much lower than what's allowable in our drinking water."

So the dosage was far smaller than our daily exposure to naturally-occurring sources of radiation, and would be entirely harmless even if we were drinking seawater, which most of us don't.  But it didn't stop people from freaking out completely about how we were being poisoned, irradiated, and (of course) all gonna die.

A more recent goofy claim that has the interwebz in a tizzy lately is the claim that asbestos has been discovered in crayons.  Asbestos, of course, is one of those words like "radioactivity" -- all you have to do is say it and people start thinking they're being killed.  In fact, the danger of asbestos for most people is minimal -- the majority of the asbestos that's still around is safely locked up in wall board and ceiling tiles.  It's only when asbestos-containing materials get broken up, and the dust produced that way is deeply inhaled, that it increases one's likelihood of getting certain lung cancers, such as mesothelioma.

So what about the asbestos in crayons?  First of all, there's the difficulty in telling apart asbestos fibers from talc.  Talc, a chemically related mineral, is used in all sorts of things, up to and including baby powder.  You also don't want to inhale talc -- but the same could be said for any finely-powdered mineral.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Second, even if there was asbestos in crayons, could it hurt you?  The answer is "almost certainly not."  All the way back in 2000, the Consumer Product Safety Commission was prompted to do an analysis of crayons, and found "a trace amount of asbestos in two Crayola crayons made by Binney and Smith and one Prang crayon made by Dixon Ticonderoga" but stated that "the amount of asbestos is so small it is scientifically insignificant."  Add that to the fact that this "scientifically insignificant" quantity of asbestos is bound up in the colored wax that makes up the rest of the crayon, so the likelihood of inhaling it is nil, and you have what is commonly called a "tempest in a teapot."

Snopes put it succinctly: "In other words, if trace amounts of asbestos were encased in a waxy substance such as crayons, those fibers would not be friable and would pose no risk of becoming airborne."

It'd be nice if more people would learn about risk and toxicity -- not only would it get them to calm down about the stuff they're exposed to on a daily basis, most of which their bodies handle just fine, it would also stop people from forwarding ridiculous claims on Facebook and Twitter, which is getting to be annoying.  In any case: don't worry about letting your kids use crayons.  Coloring in a coloring book is not going to give them lung cancer.  All you have to do is make sure that they aren't grinding up their crayons and snorting the powder.

But I'm hoping you'd do that in any case.

Diagnosing demonic possession using crayons

There are times when I wonder if some people aren't really crazy, but are engaging in a sort of elaborate game of self-parody.

I do, after all, spend a lot of time saying, "I'm not making this up.  I promise," and still some of the topics I find for this blog seem to have the effect of making my readers say, "No, really?  That's just straining credulity to the snapping point."

Yeah.  I know.  Take, for example, the televangelist and the "ex-gay" therapist who got into a discussion this week about how you can diagnose both homosexuality and demonic possession using a drawing of a brain and a box of colored pencils.

Toufik Benedictus "Benny" Hinn, an Israeli-born evangelical who runs the Benny Hinn Ministries and the "Miracle Crusades" revival meeting/faith healing circuit, was interviewing Jerry Mungadze, a psychologist who claims that his therapy turns gay people straight and even "changes their brains to be more like straight people's."  So we're definitely talking about a serious meeting of minds, here.  The following is a transcript of the conversation that ensued:

Mungadze:  Everything that I talk about is based on numbers, is based on studies.  Which is what you do when you're a scientist.  Now, one thing that surprised me, is that for many, many years when I lived in Africa, I saw people that were demonized, but I didn't know that you can actually see demonization in people's brains, which I can now.

Hinn:  Wait, wait, wait, stop.  You can see demonization in people's brains?

Mungadze:  Yeah.

Hinn:  How?

Mungadze:  There is a certain color that I won't mention that tells me if a person has been demonized.

Hinn:  Now, let me explain what he just said to you.  What he has you do, and we're going to show you materials that you can have on your own [holds up drawing of a brain], he divides the brain into different parts, and each part speaks of one area of your life.  This [points to various areas on the drawing] is how you relate to people, this is your compassion, this is your identity, and this deals with your focus, and so on.  And by the colors you choose, you take colored pencils and color every area, he can tell you everything about yourself.  Now, you hear this, and you go, "no, no, that's impossible."  Now, trust me.  This man really can.

Mungadze:  I can be in a room with some people, for example some of the people of the occult, people who were steeped in demonology.  I may not know just by sitting next to them, but I let them do that [color the brain drawing] and I can tell them what spirit they have and what it is doing in their life. 

Hinn:  By the color.

Mungadze:  Yeah.  The trouble, it is a spiritual trouble.  Demonization, for instance.  Or if the trouble is abuse, if they grew up in a family where there is abuse, or people who come from the occult, or come from witchcraft.

Hinn:  What colors do they choose, usually?

Mungadze:  Usually blacks and browns, and grays.

There was also this earlier interview with Mungadze on the Daystar Network, wherein he revealed that he can diagnose men as being gay using the same technique.  Gay guys, apparently, like to use pink crayons more than straight guys do.

Every time I think these people can't possibly find a way to make themselves appear more ridiculous, they do, somehow.

I have sometimes been accused of only going after the low-hanging fruit -- of choosing the most absurd fringe beliefs out there, and highlighting those, rather than engaging in the more difficult job of countering subtle, intelligent arguments (and those do exist).  To some extent, guilty as charged.  On the other hand, I wouldn't feel the need to point out the idiotic claims of people like Hinn and Mungadze if everyone had the reaction of laughing them into oblivion.  But according to the Wikipedia article I posted above, Benny Hinn is incredibly successful at convincing people -- his television show This is Your Day is one of the world's most-watched Christian broadcasts, and his revival meetings are incredibly well-attended.  In three meetings on a "crusade" in India, his message was heard by 7.3 million people.

He is also incredibly wealthy.  Using donations from the faithful, he was able to purchase a personal Gulfstream G4SP jet (dubbed the "Dove One") valued at $36 million, and which costs an estimated $600,000 a year to maintain and operate.

We're not talking about some kind of fly-by-night revivalist preacher at the county fair, here.  People listen to this guy, and mostly, they believe him.

So it's easy for the rationalists to sit back and laugh.  "Colored pencils?  Demonization?  Diagnosing psychiatric conditions using crayons?"  But unfortunately, such is the widespread credulity in the world, the no-evidence-needed, faith-based approach to knowledge, that even such an apparent act of self-parody as Hinn and Mungadze just engaged in doesn't seem to elicit much besides a resounding "Hallelujah."