New York City flew into a panic recently over the minuscule problem of trans fats -- yet the much more significant dangers of an ice storm seem to leave us unfazed.
Perhaps the late Dr. Robert Atkins would appreciate the irony. He famously harangued Americans to avoid carbs as a (dubious) method of combating obesity -- but it was a tragic slip on an icy street that killed him four years ago.
Last week's ice storm was also an imminent threat to the life and health of New Yorkers, as should have been readily apparent. When I woke up Wednesday last week, I heard Meredith Vieira mention on the Today show that she had taken an ugly fall and hit her head on ice while entering 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Apparently, two security guards went down with her. Yet City schools were not being closed, nor did I hear any dire warnings from the Mayor's office about the dangers of ice. It must be fine out there, I thought.
Several times on the walk to work, I nearly fell. My staff had similar stories of near-accidents but arrived at the office intact. My twenty-nine year-old daughter was not so lucky. On Wednesday, the cab she was riding in slid into another vehicle. The next day, she slipped on a City street, had the full weight of her body fall on her arm, and fractured her shoulder. She was in terrible pain for the next twenty-four hours and, as write this, just received X-rays and an MRI.
As I left the City yesterday heading for meetings in New Jersey, a large truck came up to the right of the car I was in (a car service with a driver) and cut in front of us. Seconds later, what was probably hundreds of pounds of ice shards fell from the truck's roof and pelted the windshield of our vehicle. The seriousness of the impact only became apparent when the driver lifted the visor: the epicenter of the ice assault was on the glass right in front of his seat, which was now broken.
But, thank God, the City has banned trans fats in restaurants!
Of course, there is no evidence whatever that any New Yorker will be protected from heart disease by a ban on trans fatty acids. Yet the amount of resources Mayor Bloomberg and the City Health Department put into securing this ban was enormous.
Meanwhile, the risks to life and limb from ice-covered roads and sidewalks is real -- and enormous. Statistics on injuries from ice-related falls and car accidents last week are not readily available, but anecdotal reports coming my way suggest they were significant.
Why can't we make rational decisions about how to prioritize risks? The same Mayor who is saving us from trans fat didn't even bother to ban alternate side of the street parking on stormy Feb. 15, increasing danger to New York citizens (he apologized for it the next day). One of my staff found herself having to spend nearly an hour digging her car out of a snow bank created by plowing that day, and hers wasn't the only car sliding dangerously as it fought its way out of the muck, eager to avoid getting a parking ticket.
The City was negligent in not warning New Yorkers about the dangers posed by ice. The City schools should have been closed -- setting a standard for offices (many offices, including mine, close anytime there is a city-wide school closure). City officials should have advised the elderly in particular to stay off the sidewalks and streets.
Ice can kill. Trans fats rarely, if ever, do. But one threat seems familiar and the other -- if it is even a health problem at all -- sounds mysterious and new and so gets more attention from reporters and politicians alike. So it is with countless other health scares, the obscure or even imaginary ones getting all the attention while the much more significant real ones get ignored. How do we dig our way out that irrational mess?
Dr. Elizabeth Whelan is president of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org, HealthFactsAndFears.com).
Speaking of trans fat, check out ACSH's full report on Trans Fatty Acids and Heart Disease.
