I got my start in risk communication – before the phrase was coined – as someone who helped environmental groups arouse public concern about the need for recycling, the dangers of factory emissions, and the like. My earliest publications, most of which are not available on this site or anywhere on the web, dealt with how to design and carry out environmental advocacy campaigns. For a list of these early publications, check out the entries for the 1970s in my C.V.
In the terminology I now use, my focus was on high-hazard low-outrage situations. The job was precaution advocacy: to arouse some healthy outrage and use it to mobilize people to take precautions or demand precautions.
I never abandoned this focus, but starting in the 1980s more of my time was spent on the opposite problem: reducing outrage in low-hazard high-outrage controversies. (See Outrage Management (Low Hazard, High Outrage).) There were two main exceptions.
One exception was work with Neil Weinstein and others on radon. Radon is an odorless, colorless gas and a naturally occurring carcinogen; it accumulates in buildings (especially well insulated buildings) and ends up in the lungs of the residents. When I first got involved in radon communication, authorities were afraid people would panic; Neil and I assured them the dominant problem would be apathy, not panic – and we launched a research program to figure out how to persuade people to test their homes for radon and, if high levels were found, to mitigate the problem.
The other major exception was employee safety. From time to time a client that had first employed me to help figure out how to reduce community outrage about one set of hazards came back for help when employees were ignoring or mishandling a more serious set of hazards. A mining company in Australia, for example, needed to persuade employees to obey safety regulations. The work I had done for environmental activists on arousing outrage was helpful here, but other approaches were needed too – sometimes the problem wasn’t really insufficient employee outrage at the hazard, but rather excessive employee outrage at the precaution: safety rules and safety equipment that chafed. I haven't done any radon work in a long time, but I continue to consult and write on environmental activism and on risk communication aspects of employee safety.
Much more recently I have become heavily involved in a third venue for precaution advocacy: mobilizing people to take action with regard to infectious disease outbreaks, especially the risk of an influenza pandemic. My writing on pandemic communication is indexed in the “Pandemic Flu and Other Infectious Diseases Index.” But some articles focusing on arousing apathetic audiences are also listed here, while some that focus on helping people cope when the time comes are also listed in the “Crisis Communication Index.”
So the “Precaution Advocacy” articles listed below are derived from four main sources – work with environmental activists from the early 1970s through the present; work on radon communication in the 1980s and 1990s; work on employee safety from the 1990s through the present; and work on pandemic preparedness in the 2000s.
Jump to Topics
On Precaution Advocacy Generally
On Environmental Activism
On Radon Testing and Mitigation
On Employee Safety
On Infectious Diseases and Pandemic Preparedness
(2000), edited by Brian A. Day and Martha C. Monroe
(December 2005) (September 2005) by Jennifer Busick
(October 2001)
by Peter M. Sandman and Jody Lanard (July 2005)
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Peter M. Sandman
59 Ridgeview Rd. Princeton NJ 08540-7601 |
Phone: 1-609-683-4073
Fax: 1-609-683-0566 Email: peter@psandman.com |
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