The Culture of Fear_ Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things - Barry Glassner [123]
It fell to Daniel Heimpel, a writer for the L.A. Weekly, to bring to light the victim-cum-advocate who started it all, Sharon Kramer, a former realtor whose daughter Erin is among a small group of people susceptible to mold allergies because of previously compromised immune systems (Erin has cystic fibrosis). In 1998 Erin was diagnosed with allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis, which she contracted from mold during a hospital stay. With her daughter’s case as proof of the syndrome, Sharon Kramer made toxic mold her life’s work. A decade later she was still fighting. “She saw a conspiracy funded by businesses out to end mold claims while risking the public’s health. She believed that the well-being of thousands depended on her exposing that deceit,” writes Heimpel. “Kramer’s belief has consumed her.”37
When I checked the scientific literature, it wasn’t hard to learn that “the term ‘toxic mold’ is not accurate. While certain molds are toxigenic, meaning they can produce toxins (specifically mycotoxins), the molds themselves are not toxic, or poisonous,” as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) notes. “Certain individuals with chronic respiratory disease (chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, asthma) may experience difficulty breathing. Individuals with immune suppression may be at increased risk for infection from molds.”38
When a blue-ribbon panel of scientists conducted an exhaustive appraisal of the scientific evidence well into the panic, they reported that while mold can worsen a person’s asthma condition and produce common if annoying upper respiratory tract symptoms in most anyone, “the available evidence does not support an association between either indoor dampness or mold and the wide range of other health complaints that have been ascribed to them.”39
As with other metaphoric illnesses, most of the alleged symptoms of toxic mold syndrome are vague and far-flung. And like other impassioned advocates, Sharon Kramer pits herself against the medical establishment, which she believes is in league with business—in this case, housing developers and contractors. For Kramer and other advocates, anecdotal evidence trumps scientific study, and those anecdotes can go far in making for good news stories and tearful testimony in court cases, before legislatures, and on advocates’ websites and blogs.
A metaphor for anxieties shared by a great many Americans—that our health is at the mercy of powerful, mysterious forces that do not care about us—toxic mold syndrome, unlike mold itself, is unlikely to fade away under the light of day.
The March of Crimes
Neither is another illogicality I discussed in earlier chapters: an overemphasis of uncommon crimes and deemphasis of the common instrument of death and serious injury in those and other crimes.
In TV newsrooms, if it bleeds it leads remains the watchword. A study of 559 newscasts in twenty television markets across the United States compared the crimes covered by local news to the number and types of crimes actually committed. Although crime had fallen for eight years prior to the 2004 study, in all twenty markets “audiences were told essentially the same story—that random, violent crime was a persistent and structural feature of American society,” the researchers found. All the more misleading, the newscasts consistently gave the impression that murder and other serious crimes are rampant in places where they are rare.
In the nation’s largest cities, murder accounted for only .2 percent of all crimes, and in the suburbs of those cities, murder accounted for just .01 percent. Yet not only are murder stories a staple of the coverage in those cities, accounting for 36 percent of the crimes reported on the TV news, the newscasts warned suburban viewers that crime was moving to their areas.40
Why scare the suburban audiences? They tend to have the buying power advertisers like, the study suggested: “The notion