Week after week the news media report on the latest medical studies that identify some new and unexpected risk to our health.

Do cell phones cause brain tumors? Do overhead power lines lead to childhood leukemia? Does exposure to common chemicals increase the risk of breast cancer? We see the scary headlines, but few of us notice the inevitable follow-up stories that put these newly apprehended risks into perspective and often debunk the initial reports altogether.

A new book, Hyping Health Risks by epidemiologist Geoffrey Kabat looks at how cynical activists, over zealous regulators, and self-interested scientists advance their own agendas by feeding the media’s hunger for hot headlines, despite the often questionable methods behind such studies.

A review of Kabat’s book in the Wall Street Journal cites the now familiar example of “second hand smoke.” The reviewer claims to have evidence from personal experience that the EPA, spurred on by anti-smoking activists, ignored easily available and obvious scientific facts in order to come to a politically popular conclusion about the dangers of passive exposure to tobacco smoke.

This and a number of other widely publicized studies discussed in Kabat’s book, illustrate a problem big companies face almost every day, a problem made infinitely more difficult to manage because it is so firmly rooted in human nature.

While companies concerned about public perception of health risk can’t do anything to change human nature, they can be alert to the likelihood that activists will seek to take advantage of unfounded fears in order to pursue their own agendas.

Companies dealing with concerns based on irrational fear must understand that facts alone will not persuade. Effective risk communication requires a sincere acknowledgment of the public’s concern and concrete action to address it. Appreciating irrational concern and addressing it at an emotional level is the only way to get the audience to pay attention to the hard scientific facts.

Finally, there needs to be a new question introduced into public debates. The great irony of replacing highly tested products with allegedly safer but lesser tested products is that the replacements may be and sometimes are, less safe than the original product. Just as consumers have learned to “Just say no,” or “Drive 55,” consumers must now be inspired to ask, “But is a replacement product a safe idea?”