When it comes to potentially harmful chemicals, what worries us most? According to a new study, it's what we eat and drink. People are more concerned about chemicals in food and beverages than those they might breathe in or encounter through skin care products.
The findings, published in Risk Analysis, come from a survey of nearly 2,000 adults in the United States, United Kingdom and Denmark. Researchers wanted to understand how people judge the risks of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which can interfere with the body's hormones and have been linked to reproductive problems, metabolic disorders and other health concerns.
Participants considered 18 everyday situations involving these chemicals, including drinking from plastic bottles containing BPA, using sunscreen containing parabens and breathing air containing chemicals from household products.
Across all three countries, people consistently rated eating and drinking as the riskiest ways to encounter these chemicals. Breathing them in came second, while exposure through the skin ranked lowest.
Interestingly, people also viewed airborne chemicals as harder to avoid or control. Products applied to the skin, meanwhile, seemed more familiar and manageable.
But what people perceive as dangerous doesn't always reflect the actual risk. Whether a chemical poses a health concern depends on the substance, how much someone encounters and how often they're exposed. The study examined people's beliefs, not whether one type of exposure is more harmful than another.
Researchers also found that people who said they knew more about hormone-disrupting chemicals tended to believe they were more likely to experience health problems from them.
That raises an interesting question: Does knowing more about potential hazards make people worry more, or are people who already worry more likely to seek out information? Because the study only looked at people's responses at one point in time, researchers couldn't determine which came first.
There were some differences between countries, too. Americans and Britons appeared to give more weight to feelings such as dread and concern about serious consequences. Danish participants placed relatively more emphasis on how familiar the chemicals seemed and how much control they believed they had over exposure.
The researchers suggest that these findings could help improve how health agencies communicate information about chemicals. Rather than focusing primarily on unfamiliar chemical names, they could explain risks in terms of everyday activities, such as eating, drinking and using household products.
The study has some limitations. Participants received information about hormone-disrupting chemicals before answering the survey, which may have influenced their responses. Researchers also didn't measure actual chemical exposure or examine whether people's concerns affected their behavior.
Still, the findings reveal an interesting distinction between what we worry about and what we know about potential health risks. For consumers sorting through food safety headlines and warnings about everyday products, those aren't always the same thing.
This research was supported by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond).