The Dangers of Too Much Safety

The world is a dangerous place. And let’s be honest — to one degree or another, we all rely on other people to keep us safe.

We know to wash our fruits and vegetables before we eat them. But we rely on food inspectors to make sure that what we eat isn’t tainted.

We know to use medication only in the doses it’s prescribed. But we rely on the FDA to make sure that medication won’t harm us.

We know that we should protect ourselves from getting too much Sun. But we rely on regulators to make sure that it’s … illegal for us to buy the most effective kinds of sunscreen?

Yeah, that last one is true — and is a good example of how the good intentions behind public safety can go really, really wrong.

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These days, the average American consumer … is scared $#!+less.

Just about everywhere you turn there’s a health guru or wellness influencer telling you that something is going to poison you or give you cancer: the food supply, the medical system, chemtrails … which — and we can’t emphasize this enough — are just water vapor, people.ⁱ

And you can see the results of all this anxiety in the data. In 2024, Gallup reported that Americans’ confidence in the safety of our food supply was at an all-time low.ⁱⁱ And between 2019 and 2023, Pew found that public distrust of scientists more than doubled.ⁱⁱⁱ

And here’s the good news: All the real-world data suggests that these are the wrong things to be worrying about.

Concerned about our food supply? In an international ranking of 113 countries, America is consistently ranked at or near the top for food quality and safety.^iv

Worried about the state of our health?

When you adjust for the fact that Americans lifespans have increased, cancer cases actually fell by nearly six percent between 2000 and 2021 — and cancer deaths fell by over 27 percent.^v

But here’s where this gets tricky: Because we’ve spent all this energy worrying that public officials aren’t doing enough to keep us safe, we’ve missed the fact that there are also cases where they’re doing too much to keep us safe.

And if that sounds crazy, well, here's what we mean.

Behind all the products that could affect your health — things like the foods you eat or the medications you take — there is a vast array of scientists and regulators whose job is to make sure they’re safe for you. And to guide their work, those people often rely on something called the precautionary principle.

Put as simply as possible, the precautionary principle is the idea that if we don’t know for sure that something is safe, we shouldn’t allow people to use it. Which sounds like common sense. But it all depends on what you mean by “safe.” And what you mean by “know for sure.”

To understand the stakes here, you have to understand the difference between a “hazard” and a “risk.” Though we often use those words interchangeably in everyday life, they actually have very specific meanings in a scientific context.

A “hazard” is anything with the theoretical potential to cause harm, while a “risk” is the likelihood of that hazard actually hurting someone.^vi

So, for example, a hungry shark in an aquarium is a hazard, even though it poses very little risk … we hope.

And understanding this distinction is the key to understanding where a lot of our health anxieties come from.

It’s commonplace, for instance, to hear that many food additives or ingredients that are legal in the United States are prohibited in Europe — which makes it sound like government officials in the U.S. are being reckless with our health. In reality, however, the difference is how they’re applying the precautionary principle.

American health officials tend to be worried about “risk” — the chance that someone is actually going to get hurt — while European officials are often more focused on “hazards” — the theoretical possibility that something could go wrong. And if that sounds like a subtle distinction, it actually leads to some pretty bizarre outcomes.

A good example of this is Red Dye No. 3, a food coloring that’s illegal in Europe but has been used in the U.S. for over 100 years.^vii

Why did Europe ban it? Because of a theoretical link to cancer.

Why did America allow it? Because that theoretical link was based on cancer showing up in rats who were fed nearly 25,000 times as much Red Dye No.3 as the amount approved for human consumption. And because the rats’ cancer was caused by a hormonal mechanism that doesn’t occur in the human body^viii — which meant the actual risk to people was essentially imperceptible.

That’s why, when America bowed to political pressure to ban Red Dye No. 3 in early 2025, scientists at the FDA released the world’s most passive-aggressive announcement essentially saying that the decision made no sense:^ix

Another example of this is sunscreen. Any doctor will tell you that protecting your skin from sun exposure is an essential step for warding off skin cancer. Yet, the most effective sunscreens, which are widely used in Europe and Asia, are illegal to sell in the U.S.

Why? Because we regulate sunscreens like pharmaceuticals rather than cosmetics. Which means they’d be subject to an expensive, years-long review process, despite the fact that European authorities found them safe 20 years ago.^x

Now, you might be thinking “OK, but is this really that big a deal?” After all, food dye and slightly subpar sunscreens aren’t really a matter of life and death. But here’s the thing: Sometimes blindly applying the precautionary principle really is a matter of life and death.

We can see this most acutely in The Philippines. In 2018, it was estimated that 17 percent of the country’s children under the age of five suffered from a vitamin A deficiency,^xi a condition that often leads to blindness and even death.

Luckily, scientists have genetically engineered a variety of rice to produce vitamin A and make this tragedy a thing of the past. But despite the fact that it had won approval from regulators in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.S.^xii — and despite the fact that some 3,000 studies have led to an overwhelming scientific consensus that genetically modified foods are as safe to eat as conventional ones^xiii — a Filipino court blocked the use of the rice because it said the nation’s constitution required abiding by the precautionary principle.^xiv

The question didn’t come down to weighing risks vs. rewards. It didn’t even come down to trying to judge the research. The court ruled that just the fact that there was more than one point of view on the issue proved there was no “consensus.”^xv And the children of the Philippines will pay the price.

Which is an important reminder of what’s at stake here.

It’s no easy matter to make decisions about safety when the evidence is uncertain or incomplete.

But in the face of that uncertainty, we have to make reasonable judgments about costs and benefits, not blindly following abstract rules even when they harm us.

Remember, “hazards” are everywhere. But if we want to be serious about safety, we have to focus our attention on the genuine risks.

Like the shark getting creative.